Fiction writers who borrow from life often dodge inquiries about what’s true in their work, causing readers to see them as cagey or coy. But unless you’re writing strict autobiography and just changing names, these kinds of questions are difficult to answer honestly. In some sections of my own book, fact and fiction have become so tightly fused that I’d . . .
Kevin Wilson charmed Happy Ending-goers last week with “The Choir Director Affair (The Baby’s Teeth),” a darkly funny story that revolves around an otherwise normal infant with a full set of choppers, but is, in a larger sense, about desire and thwarted possibility. Wilson’s fiction maps the disconnect between obsessive longing and, for lack of a better word, fate. Sometimes . . .
At Twitter, Colson Whitehead shares one of his TV haiku, and composes an ode to Cheever–Seinfeld on the spot.
Not confined to the pages of Dickens’ Little Dorrit: Debtors’ prisons make a comeback, with Florida leading the charge. (See also.)