Michelle Dean

There’s been a lot of grumbling in my local area about a certain Book Deal, the astronomical sum it amounted to, its potential to displace sums that could be allocated to other books, the dubious economics of such a deal,…

Every week lately Saturday sneaks up on me. I’ll be sauntering along happily through the week and then suddenly I’m waking up on the weekend and I’m to post here. Some weeks I have a history lesson near-finished; other weeks,…

… to listen to Flannery O’Connor read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”

Lia Lee, the protagonist of Anne Fadiman’s excellent work of non-fiction, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, died on August 31st. If you don’t know just what that signifies, the Times has a long article about Lia, and the book,…

Stacey May Fowles has a great essay up at the National Post about writing and publishing — or rather, writing and not-publishing — accounts of sexual violence. It might not be possible for an American to know the shadow the…

Last night I was talking to a friend about how I would run a magazine, assuming I ever happened to do such a thing. I told her I’d probably run it according to Wolcott Gibbs’ “Theory and Practice of Editing…

I continue to be distressed at the lack of North American access to Parade’s End. Ford Madox Ford is the kind of writer other writers of his day read and interacted with and then felt they must react to. A lot…

In his first marriage, Vonnegut was reduced to making out a contract with his wife to get all the relevant chores done. Those of you who are co-habiting or planning to do so in the forseeable future may find this…

I had a terribly busy week. One of the things keeping me busy, I’d like to mention, is the excitement over the release of D.T. Max’s Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, which goes…