January 24, 2007
Kenyon Review Readers–duh!
Sometimes it takes years to see the simplest thing. Yesterday afternoon Meg Galipault, our valiant managing editor, and I were having a conversation about KR readership–how we may reach a […]
January 24, 2007
Short Takes
Sign (or Signs) of the Apocalypse. Lewis Lapham to be inducted into the Editor’s Hall of Fame (who knew it even existed?).
January 23, 2007
Short Takes
Don’t leave books around ethics students (Thanks, Tyler!). Dinesh D’Sousa identifies Martha Nussbaum, the bad girl of Aristotelianism, as one of America’s enemies, probably because he doesn’t like the hemlines […]
January 22, 2007
Short takes
The Times covers E.B. White’s letters. Not only does White father birds, I’ll bet those letters are perfectly punctuated. Andrew Hussey’s Paris: The Secret History is “clearly a labor of […]
January 19, 2007
The Little Magazine in America – II
On Thursday we had the first full class of my new course on the Little Magazine in America. I’ve gone from a vague terror about wading into a topic about […]
January 19, 2007
Short takes
Eskimos have no more words for snow than anybody else. (via Language Log) Thomas Hardy wrote love letters to his wife when he was seventy-two, though he seems most fond […]
January 18, 2007
Short takes
The 10 Most Expensive Books of 2006 are beautiful, but you might want to stick with Rand McNally. The ebook will feature “touch-screen hardware” and some serious page-turning action, but […]
January 17, 2007
Rehearsing A Midsummer Night’s Dream
So I’m here in Boston, directing a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Boston Theatre Works. I started rehearsals a week ago, and we have our press opening in […]
January 17, 2007
Short takes
Lesson of the day: write every book as though it is your last. How did it take someone so long to think of this? J. Peter Zane put together The […]
January 16, 2007
Short takes
After all of that blather about meaningless prizes, here’s an uplifting one: Heaney won the TS Eliot Award. The Reading Experience debates the greatness of airport books.
January 15, 2007
MLK Day
A belated link to The Language Log’s tribute, where you can hear the “I Have A Dream” speech and see a breakdown of the phonetics. Sometimes the irritation we feel […]
January 15, 2007
Short takes
It’s a rough day for fiction writers. Fiction may have lost its power, according to Rod Liddle. The New York Times says no one’s a winner when everyone gets a […]