Blog

On literary prizes

At the New York Times’ Room for Debate, some of my thoughts on literary prizes. (And on only recently discovering Rabindranath Tagore.)

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In the latest Bookforum: Florida, true and fake

I wrote about T.D. Allman’s Finding Florida, a history of the state, and a history of the state’s fake history of itself, for the latest Bookforum. It’s only available in print.   Updated July 4, 2014, to add this scan:

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Some company for slow writers

For Tin House’s site, I write about finding solace for the slow pace of my own novel in the writing of Donna Tartt and my friend Alexander Chee.

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Ellen Ullman and the mess we make of connecting

“Search is a deep human yearning, an ancient trope in the recorded history of human life.” Please get to know Ellen Ullman’s novelistic and critical brilliance (which I discuss at length at Salon) if you haven’t yet.

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