On grief — and dying without finishing your book
Just about every time my father-in-law (above) and I talked on the phone, we began by filling each other in on whatever progress we’d made with the books we were writing. I don’t remember exactly when he decided to start working on a study of Macbeth, but I remember his interest developing and his [...]
A very Seventies homage to J.M. Barrie
As you can see, I have the best in-laws. That’s Larry on the left, and Jane on the right, and though they divorced years ago — long before I met them — they’re both still this fun and campy.
Right now I’m reading Old Mortality, a gift from Larry. He figured I would appreciate Sir [...]
Thrilling finale of my Culture Diary
I can’t believe I forgot to link to the second installment of my Paris Review Daily Culture Diary.
It’s not any sexier than the first, I’m afraid, but if you’re craving more usage pedantry, solo drinking tips, or line-editing blow-by-blows, you won’t want to let this one pass you by.
Here’s one of the mouse-over [...]
My Kingsley Amis obsession continues at The Paris Review Daily — and in Central Florida
The first part of my Culture Diary — chronicling things I read, watched, and did the week before last — is up at The Paris Review Daily. Featured: Muriel Spark, Kingsley Amis, Sam Lipsyte, Damages, Jenny Diski, Jimmy Buffett, Rebecca West, Panir Sabzee, Jonathan Franzen, alcoholic beverages…
The silence around here may continue for a little [...]
My ode to an enchanted hotel, in Oxford American
Oxford American’s fifth annual Best of the South issue includes my ode to Miami’s Biltmore Hotel, which I grew up thinking was haunted. Here’s an excerpt:
By day, the hotel was a dingy institutional white, its roof stained with age and half its windows blocked up, but when I first saw it lit against the night [...]
Organizational feat, or technological boondoggle?
Organization, as you may recall, is not a virtue I possess in excess. And it depresses me when plans are drawn up and fail. So I hadn’t attempted to outline my novel draft in a couple of years. Now that the project has changed so fundamentally, though, I decided to spend a couple hours this [...]
Prepare ye the way, etc.
According to the nice man handing out tracts in the subway station below my workplace, the world is going to end on my birthday next year. (Details.)
As someone prone to equal parts self-loathing and self-absorption, and raised in a constant state of Rapture-readiness, I can’t say I’d be surprised.
Either way, and I hope you’ll [...]
On realizing I’ve been writing two novels, not one
Kelsey Newman, the narrator of Scarlett Thomas’ forthcoming Our Tragic Universe, aspires to literary greatness but actually ghostwrites YA thrillers. Her descriptions of the ever-evolving Serious Novel she’s been writing for years remind me so much of my own experience, laughing at them feels like an admission that I have no idea what I’m [...]
Notes on eight years of book blogging
Obviously I’m thrilled to be included in the Times’ (UK) list of “Forty bloggers who really count.” As is my nature, I also feel anxious and unworthy, but at a certain point (which came for me a long time ago) it is tacky and seems disingenuous to say so. Feel free to call me on [...]
Philip Larkin on the conflict between work and poetry
From now on, when people inquire how I feel about working a day job, I think I’ll defer to Philip Larkin. Asked about his life as a University of Hull librarian, the poet replied:
Taking it all in all, work and I get on fairly well, I think. There are just these occasions when one would [...]
Tea with Muriel Spark (and not Dostoyevsky)
Muriel Spark’s 1992 autobiography has been characterized as purse-lipped, sterile, and withholding, a manipulative account designed to settle scores and divert attention from anything unflattering.
Curriculum Vitae may be more factual than confessional, but judged on its own terms rather than by the standards of the contemporary tell-all, the book is a charming, idiosyncratic, [...]
A hundred years without Mark Twain
Mark Twain, who died a hundred years ago today, entered the world and left with Halley’s Comet. His essays have a permanent place on my bedside table; I read them whenever my own writing stalls. Those perfect verbs, those unexpected but accurate nouns, that distinctive sense of the absurd and limitless ability to [...]
NYC apartment living conducive to electronic books; or, where possible, please send galleys for iPad
At night, when I get home from work, or from whatever I’ve done after work, I open packages from publishers. Then I stack most of the books* along this wall, behind the dining room table and next to the liquor credenza. Classy, I know. But it’s an improvement.
At our old place, when the galleys [...]
On the viability of book covers in an ebook world
A couple months ago I saw a girl press onto the subway, give the boy next to her a once-over, and casually tilt her iPhone — accidentally on purpose — so he could see what she was listening to. After a couple tries, it worked. By the time we reached Jay Street, they were talking [...]
Sarah Palin’s Planet Earth different from yours, mine
The Awl has published my examination of Sarah Palin’s fundamentalist background — a background not entirely dissimilar to my own. I have a hunch about what she’s up to with her new reality show, and it scares the hell of out me.
When Sarah Palin began shopping around a “Planet Earth-type” reality series based in Alaska [...]