Adam Haslett’s Imagine Me Gone is painful, even tragic, and yet it is also just funny and acerbic enough to keep it (or its readers) from becoming unbearably sad. In fact, I thought there was something oddly bracing about it. That’s partly because I thought it was so well done, artistically and formally, but it’s also […]

I had a minor epiphany this morning: I should try to approach writing in the same spirit I approach running. I’ve been running fairly regularly for over a decade now. It has turned out to be just the kind of exercise that suits me. Growing up, gym class was always a nightmare for me, from the […]

The jet lag has lifted and I’m settling back into my routines after my trip to Vancouver–my first real vacation away since July 2015. And even so, it was hard to keep work obligations entirely at bay: a very late paper arrived at 10 p.m. the night before I left and had to be dealt with […]

I am back from my trip to Vancouver, where in spite of the rain (even, in some ways, because of it) I had a lovely time visiting with family and friends and drinking in the always inspiring sight of the mountains rising above the city and the sea. It was a a welcome interlude between […]

I haven’t disappeared or given up blogging! It’s just that as soon as my final grades went in, I had to buckle down and finish two reviews that have been haunting me — not because I didn’t want to write them, but because though I have had the books for some time and had even started […]