Archive for November, 2011

Outtakes from my talk with Susan Miller

The first installment of my new microcolumn, “The Historical Record,” ran in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday alongside some other quickies, including Lizzie Skurnick’s brilliant (and useful!) “That Should Be A Word.” This one concerns astrology, from Chaucer to Susan Miller. A friend who, like me, is drawn to the stars, says astrology shouldn’t and possibly doesn’t work . . .

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Didion’s Blue Nights: stitched in grief

I reviewed Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, which is both gorgeous and terrible (terrible in the King James sense of tremendous and fearsome, like when God appears to Moses). In 2003’s Where I Was From, Joan Didion tells of a long wagon journey on which her great-great-grandmother buried a child, gave birth to another, contracted mountain fever twice, and sewed a . . .

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