October 7, 2017
Pop Quiz: What Kind of Novel Are You?
1. In your favorite novel, the main character’s name is: A) Arabella Featherstone B) Luther Impossibilius C) Jake Amnesty D) The same as the author’s 2. In your favorite novel, […]
July 27, 2017
Writing the Great American Novel Amid Breast Augmentation Ads
There’s this breast augmentation ad on the subway where this woman’s holding oranges over her chest and looking sad in the lefthand picture and grapefruits over her chest and looking […]
June 20, 2016
Summer in Vermont
Saw a red and white hot air balloon floating over Winooski on my run by the river this morning. Crossed the footbridge and greeted a woman with one of those […]
March 7, 2013
A Note on Sentimentality
One of the underdiscussed aspects of literary taste is the principle of exclusion: Not what is welcomed in a work, but what is disallowed. In the world of contemporary fiction, […]
February 13, 2013
The Abundance: OneWorld (UK) Q & A excerpt
Not to plug my own forthcoming second novel, but–aw, why the hell not? THE ABUNDANCE is coming out from Holt/Metropolitan on March 5, 2012, and from OneWorld in the UK […]
November 8, 2012
Entertainment and Excess: The Great Literary Audiences
At the most basic level, what’s success for a biological organism is success for a literary one—whatever survives, wins. A sequence of words has an effect on a given […]
July 7, 2012
On Laurent Binet’s HHhH
I sought out with immense eagerness the English translation of Laurent Binet’s Prix-Goncourt-winning novel, HHhH. This book concerns Operation Anthropoid, the plot to assassinate the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. I had […]