Archive
Like Fire
Nichole Bernier crossed my radar recently as the writer of a great “Experience Required” essay over at Bloom that asked the question: Does publishing a novel change your life?. She also, it turns out, blogs at the very good writers’ collective Beyond the Margins—definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already, as there are a [...]
Read MoreI’ve been thinking about the upcoming Hogarth Shakespeare project. The idea was announced a few months ago, but this week, for some reason, I’ve been progressing through a veritable Kübler-Ross model of literary ambivalence. The series looked like fun at first light. In anticipation of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death in 2016, Vintage [...]
Read MoreApologies to whatever readers I may have left; I’m very much in the weeds these days and the expectations of academia are doing their best to separate me from the fun and spontaneity that are necessary for blogging. But I shall do my best to fight the good fight. For starters, there’s been interesting news [...]
Read MoreThe Reluctant Fundamentalist Mohsin Hamid Harcourt, 2007 In the wake of 9/11, a few thoughtful people, in addition to being angry and sorrowful, wondered why “they” hated us. What had America done to inspire such hatred? Why would anyone wish to kill innocents? Would knowing the answers help prevent future attacks? Mohsin Hamid can’t answer [...]
Read MoreEverybody needs advice sometimes. Whether everybody wants it is another matter, but there’s a reason so many people love Cary Tennis, Dan Savage, and Dear Prudence (although I do NOT like the videos, Prudence—such a lack of intimacy). In my day, kids, we had the choice of Ann Landers and Dear Abby, and god forbid [...]
Read More1. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. The photographer/ painter Chuck Close said, “Inspiration is for amateurs—the rest of us just show up and get to work.” 2. For first drafts, quantity is better than quality. Five adequate pages are better than one good page. Ten pages of crap are better than zero pages of [...]
Read MoreCharles Simic has one of his gently bookish rants up at the NYRBlog, on a subject that’s always near and dear to my heart: the uncertain future of browsing. The gradual shuttering of used bookstores all over the country, says Simic, will surely curtail those moments of finding books that were never on our radar [...]
Read MoreI came to poetry early, thanks mainly to my parents’ throwing a few good anthologies my way as soon as I could read. I loved it all, the rhyming stuff especially, and the more fanciful the better—Coleridge and Blake being particular favorites—and also the stuff you’d expect a kid to like: John Ciardi, Edward Lear, [...]
Read MoreBlue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites Kate Christensen Doubleday, 2013 Disclaimer: I owe Kate Christensen cookies. About nine years ago, she did a guest author stint over at Readerville.com after a group read of her wonderful The Epicure’s Lament. It was the kind of book that invited rambling, and made for a convivial [...]
Read MoreIt seems to me writing letters is a lot like running: great while you’re doing it, great having done it, and the rewards are many, but making it part of your routine is the stumbling block. I always have the best of intentions, and own things like stationery and note cards and pretty stamps and [...]
Read MoreThe Illusion of Separateness Simon Van Booy HarperCollins, 2013 Of all the complex emotions a writer might set out to evoke from a reader over the course of a novel, surely compassion is one of the harder to coax out. People tend to flinch away from it even when an opportunity presents itself in real [...]
Read MoreYou know those words, writers… the ones you hoard until the moment you can use one in all seriousness, without being pretentious or looking like a painful poser. Higher education is good for that kind of thing, and Scrabble, but not much in between. So it is with great joy that I announce my successful, [...]
Read MorePossibly the single most enduring image from my own political coming of age, in my late 20s, was Tiananmen Square’s Tank Man. To someone who had idly considered herself a dissenter once upon a time—largely due, in retrospect, to sartorial choices—he was a comeuppance, the real deal. So when Erdem Gündüz staged his own solitary [...]
Read MoreIsn’t commuting daily by subway like nothing so much as pursuing a reluctant lover? You inhabit your starting point, envision your destination, and confidently plunge forward along well-laid pathways. Filled with hope and longing, capable of doubt and despair, and knowing (in your heart of hearts) that being given a moment to sit and catch [...]
Read MoreFor a publication that’s been walking that fine line between good and bad taste for years, Vice Magazine managed to piss off a whole bunch of people at once with the photo spread in its recent Fiction Issue. Titled “Last Words,” it staged a series of models portray female writers who had famously committed suicide—or, [...]
Read MoreLast night (trying to meet this Friday deadline), I opened the program and spread out my notes. Since the week before, I had wanted to write something about the damage caused by the tornadoes in Oklahoma. I went online to review some of the details and was caught up in a maelstrom of Breaking News [...]
Read MoreThe pink and purple and white canopies I mentioned recently have mostly given way to leafy clouds, the piercing yellow-green of springtime. The hardiest bad-ass stems and tendrils are forcing themselves through cracks in sidewalks and retaining walls. Road and bridge repair crews have set up shop amid blooming orange traffic cones. College commencements and [...]
Read MoreIroning, like so many other domestic chores, has about it the air of religion. There is a compelling need for specific implements and special rituals, a curious balance of fire and water, a mix of dry and damp, and a fresh (unending!) supply of pristine garments — all looming overwhelmingly to wring order from chaos. [...]
Read MoreThe Morels Christopher Hacker Soho Press, 2013 Many years ago, I bought a house while I was living with my then-boyfriend. Things weren’t going well between us, to the extent that I felt more comfortable getting into a 30-year commitment with Chase Mortgage than with him. Still, we stayed together, in no small part because [...]
Read MoreLong into each winter I reach a point where I am drawn to believe that the weather and I will never be warm again. I often make it through the holidays and the year end/beginning before this moment of existential despair overtakes me, most often after several days of unseasonable cold and unrelenting winds. I [...]
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