January 16, 2019
On the Creative Value of Unproductive Time
There’s a scene in the fifth episode of the third season of Mad Men in which Lane Pryce, one of the new managers in charge of the company’s finances, complains […]
October 26, 2018
On Character Names
Picking a character name is often as hard as writing the first line of a new novel or story—the kind of specific and essential task that often halts any momentum […]
January 14, 2015
Private Symbols in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and HBO’s Enlightened
When I was young, the idea that a red rose meant true love — while a pink rose meant appreciation and a yellow rose meant friendship — charmed me. I […]
February 23, 2014
Birds and Brush Strokes
As readers, we have certain lines (or stanzas, or paragraphs) that we can’t get out of our heads. Maybe it’s just a phrase: Dickinson’s “Buccaneers of Buzz,” Larkin’s “not untrue […]