August 4, 2013
Popular Art and the Unaccompanied Voice
An unaccompanied voice is almost never the voice you find in popular art forms. Even our most popular singers and rappers don’t get on a stage or on the radio […]
October 19, 2012
Now or Never: The Writer and the Age
One thing that’s underestimated about writing is how now-or-never it is, how suddenly it crowds out of a few people. Many of the most powerful, permanent “ages” in literature have […]
March 7, 2012
Notes on Capital-T Tragedy
1. Why it started with the Greeks and showed up again with the Elizabethans. What makes a tragedy tragic—as opposed to a story with a sad ending—is that the sufferer […]