Archive for September, 2008

A fitting Poe bicentennial

If they want a body, they can have John Wilkes Booth. Philly & Baltimore will mark Poe’s 200th birthday by squaring off over his corpse.

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Universal but utterly distinctive: Claire Keegan’s stories

You wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to write about Claire Keegan’s marvelous Walk the Blue Fields without quoting the phrase “huge cock.” (That’s what the groom’s brother has trouble stuffing back into his rented trousers, but I figured the stylebook would rather not know about it.) My review appears in the New York Times Book Review this weekend. Here’s . . .

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Erlbaum & Strauss: A weekend Munchausen double-shot

As a child I was often sick. I also faked being sick, worried about getting sick, and sometimes actually tried to make myself sick. (Nights before math tests often found me in the bathroom with my feet in a sink full of ice water.) The result of all this focus on illness is that, even now, I have trouble distinguishing . . .

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New Díaz

Junot Díaz reads a new short story, fields questions in a Boston Phoenix podcast.

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