January 30, 2019
On Elisa Gabbert’s Lydia Davis and Completeness
I like to finish things, which is a failure; as James Richardson maintains in one of his (amazing) aphorisms, all stones are broken stones and to pretend otherwise is willful folly. I’ve […]
October 25, 2018
E.M. Forster on Fantasy and Prophecy
There is a strange distinction made in the later chapters of E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, a collection of lectures the author gave at Cambridge in 1927. I’ve already […]
May 24, 2016
Shroud, Telltale, Stern: Fantasies of Sailing
This summer, I’m going to learn how to sail. I’ve only taken one lesson in the past, on the water at Hueston Woods in Oxford, Ohio, in a little Sunfish, […]
December 17, 2015
A Last-Minute Shopper’s Guide to Children’s Poetry
Before my son was born, I memorized a poem. I know how this must sound to parents and non-parents: another hopelessly sentimental exercise that’s more about the papa than the […]
November 19, 2015
Moby-Dick Out Loud on the Way to the Paris Climate Conference
By Karen Malpede I’ve been reading Moby-Dick out loud at night, slowly, with my partner. We were on chapter ninety-three–in which the castaway Pip loses sanity after being left adrift alone […]
November 15, 2012
In Which the Classics are Canvases: Matt Kish on Illustrating Melville and Conrad
Matt Kish’s project to create one image for every page of Moby-Dick takes its place in a long pantheon of artworks as veritably obsessed with Melville as Ahab was with […]
June 2, 2011
Mix Tape: Growing Pains
Listen carefully, kids, because the prompts have changed: Sit up straight, eat your peas, read your poems. You, too, parents. Looking back on David Foster Wallace’s advice for college grads. […]
June 5, 2009
In a Landlocked Summer City
What does your summer mean, chap? The summer my summers mean, it turns out, is this one: for the first time in years, I’m sleeping in grass, playing guitar, drinking […]
May 23, 2009
“The Jaws of Death Are An Easy Chair”
The always-meants: Fed an octopus; ridden a hot air balloon; gotten married; seen A Silver Mt. Zion play live; learned how my bike works; read every enormous canonical novel of […]