Blog

Travel and other journals and happenings

I leave for Berlin and Amsterdam a week from today and meanwhile am slammed at work-work and with other work, so I keep not being able to post any of the things I intend to write here. But for the first time since my college days, I’ve been keeping a journal. Actually, I’ve been keeping journals, as in many, on . . .

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On heaven, hell, certainty, and doubt

“My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a No. 1 Best Seller,” my essay about Heaven is For Real, my own fundamentalist background, and my lifelong doubt, appeared in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, underneath this illustration by Tom Gauld.

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My conversation with Alison Bechdel

“People ask me, was writing Fun Home therapeutic? And I feel like, yes it was, but that’s kind of like asking somebody if swimming the English Channel was a good workout for them. That’s not why they did it — of course it was a good workout.” The great Alison Bechdel and I spoke on the phone a couple weeks . . .

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Talking with Ron Rash, April 25, 7 p.m.

“Almost all of the great books are regional books,” Ron Rash (Serena) has said. “Landscape is destiny.” We talked about his latest novel, The Cove, on April 25, at McNally Jackson.

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