September 19, 2009
Comedy and Context
A few days ago I listened to Dean Young give a reading at the University of Michigan’s Helmut Stern Auditorium. Dressed in drainpipe jeans and a Western-style plaid shirt, Young […]
September 10, 2009
“I’m Now Going to Make My Vice-President Weep” [Pause for Applause]
Obama stands at the doorway. He’s a boxer — a cruiserweight, maybe — about to enter the ring. Then he’s announced. He beams, moves forward — all smiles and shoulder […]
August 31, 2009
A Quick Wince
Googling “dead at 46,” I’m reminded of something unspeakable: David Foster Wallace hanged himself nearly a year ago. And I imagine how quickly Wallace would’ve jumped on that “unspeakable” — […]
August 27, 2009
The Road Always Taken
Among the emerging details regarding the death of Ted Kennedy, two catch my attention. The first comes from an article in today’s Times, in which it’s mentioned that, since late […]
August 18, 2009
Suspicious Minds, Americans, and Worser English
Who comes to mind as the most American of 20th-century American artists? (And what does American mean, when I use the word this way?) Do we think of William Faulkner? […]
August 10, 2009
Grandmaster Melville
Wandering through New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, I see a flyer for a stage production of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The above-the-title blurb from The New Yorker reads, “Appropriately Pure.” I […]
August 4, 2009
“I Almost Fancy There Is Too Much Sail on the House, and I Had Better Go on the Roof and Rig in the Chimney”
Does it matter where we write our novels and poems and blog posts? I typed my notes for this post in the Berkshire Athenaeum’s Herman Melville Memorial Room in Pittsfield, […]
July 28, 2009
Contagious Magic
I’m sitting, for what I guess will be the last time, in a tan recliner in a house that once belonged to Amy Clampitt. I’ve spent a lot of evenings […]
July 20, 2009
Monday, or “Moon Day”
In Six Memos for the Next Millennium, the late, great Italo Calvino discusses five of the “values, qualities, or peculiarities of literature that are very close to [his] heart.” (Why […]
July 13, 2009
59 Across: Gandhi Punched Him
Dean Olsher, whom you may know from public radio, has written a book: From Square One: A Meditation, with Digressions, on Crosswords. The book’s publication coincides with my own burgeoning […]
July 6, 2009
All Possible and Impossible Matters
A not-quite-Mark-Sanford-sized confession: I’ve fallen in love with a book. And with that book’s introduction. Twice in the past week I’ve had reason to take a short trip, and on […]
July 1, 2009
Darkness Falls Across the Land
With all the postmortem probing of the late Michael Jackson, my desire to add to the inquiry is — to quote from Jackson’s nearly exact contemporary — something close to […]