January 8, 2015
Who Has the Loudest Voice?
All literature offends someone. To offend our fixed ideas, even our most sacred truths, is one of the ways in which writers compel us to think, to question, and to […]
January 2, 2015
When Goethe Met Napoleon
During Napoleon’s 1808 campaign in Germany, he visited his favorite author, Goethe. The two giants of the age met twice, once at Weimar and once at Erfurt. Andrew Roberts’s […]
December 10, 2014
Earl Sweatshirt’s Bookshelf, and Time
Bookshelves do funny things to time. In a recent clip, rapper Earl Sweatshirt lets FADER TV tour his Hollywood bachelor pad. In a Cribs send-up, he guides the camera through […]
October 31, 2014
Mouth, Part 2
Of my pleasures, the sweetest might be waking with my children. When I was maybe 21, I read The Clown, by Heinrich Boll. For a long time, I kept a […]
October 25, 2014
100 Berrymans
Imagine 100 different John Berrymans, in 100 different replays of the past century. They’re all born on October 25, 1914—in McAlester, in Modesto, in Madison, in Montgomery. Some are privileged, […]
October 15, 2014
Mouth, Part 1
I got old all of a sudden. My mouth went first. I was at the Kroger, in the tooth aisle, comparing Orajels. The night before, in Novelties, I wavered, hands […]
September 15, 2014
Finish What You Start
One self improvement I decided on recently is to finish what I start. I vowed this while on a treadmill at the gym, glancing from television screen to television screen, […]
September 7, 2014
Nostalgia, Sentimentality, and Robin Williams. Part 1
In my office the other day, prepping for an Intro Creative Writing course, I found myself ruffling through cabinets and drawers in search of a set of notes I made […]
September 2, 2014
The Wonderful Worlds of Borges
I recently came across an edited set of interviews with one of the true masters, Jorges Luis Borges. The book is Borges at Eighty: Conversations. I first encountered the Argentinian […]
August 25, 2014
Remarkable Findings
I captured this video a few months ago while reading the late Irene McKinney’s last poetry collection, which I blogged about here. I intended to post this video back then, […]
August 12, 2014
Robin Williams, What a Concept
“His bearing is intensely Zen and almost mournful, and when he’s not putting on voices he speaks in a low, tremulous baritone—as if on the verge of tears—that would work […]
July 11, 2014
Out of This World: Irene McKinney’s HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH DARKNESS YET? [Part Two of Two]
[This is Part Two. You can read Part One here.] “During the Night” echoes one of McKinney’s earlier poems, “Visiting My Gravesite: Talbott Churchyard, West Virginia”—another poem in which she […]