Author post… Recursions, Part 4: Jane Smiley’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel” 28 Jul 2017 This is the fourth in a series of short critical looks at books of literary criticism. Yes, a writer writing about writers who write about writers! I composed these for…
Author post… Recursions, Part 3: James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” 23 Jul 201724 Jul 2017 This is the third in a series of short critical looks at books of literary criticism. Yes, a writer writing about writers who write about writers! I composed these for…
Author post… Recursions, Part 2: Janet Malcolm’s “Forty-One False Starts” 20 Jul 201720 Jul 2017 This is the second in a series of short critical looks at books of literary criticism. Yes, a writer writing about writers who write about writers! I composed these for…
Author post… Recursions, Part 1: Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” 18 Jul 201718 Jul 2017 This is the first in a series of short critical looks at books of literary criticism. Yes, a writer writing about writers who write about writers! I composed these for…
Author post True and False Test 16 Jul 201717 Jul 2017 Marianne Moore once wrote that poetry consisted in "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," which is perhaps as good a definition as any. I'd say it applies to fiction…
Author post Cruel Graces 11 Jul 201730 Sep 2017 The grace of a cat is rooted in cruelty. Not just the cruelty of the kill itself, which, if you abstract it from the pain it imposes, is beautiful as…
Author post Stranger than Fiction 6 Jul 20176 Jul 2017 Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction, and you have to leave some of it out to make the generous lie of writing at all believable. A good example is…
Author post Distance Learning 2 Jul 201714 Jul 2017 Gina and I recently received a letter from my friend and colleague Kent Peterson, who lives in Eugene, Oregon. I mean mechanically received a letter, on paper, generated by a…
Author post Say What You Mean 28 Jun 201730 Jun 2017 Since I grew up with an engineer, I am practiced in the dark art of taking things literally. This held me back in the early days of my writing; since…
Author post Performance Anxiety: The Power of Words…and the Words of Power 25 Jun 20174 Jul 2017 I read an article this morning, a marvelously foul-mouthed rant on Southern sociopolitical hypocrisy, part of which I read aloud to my wife. The interesting point to me was that,…
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