Call it the Theory of Receptivity. It’s the idea, often stated by young people and applied as a dismissive accusation to even marginally older people, that one’s taste in music,…
I fall in love with books all the time. I remember periods of my life this way – like “what’s-his-name left me when I was reading Mrs. Dalloway” or “I…
Tinkers is a novel steeped in, and obsessed with, minutiae. Whether describing the inner workings of a clock, the network of ducts and wires that runs through a home, or…
In 1969, a lonesome amateur scholar, David Rodinsky, disappeared without trace from his caretaker’s garret above the Princelet Street Synagogue in Jewish East London. His room, unsealed a decade later,…
1. Saturday night party/silent auction for a school. Daniel Kim was there, looking around. My husband goes, “Hey, are you lost?” 2. One of the items up for bid was to…
Interesting conversation going on about a piece in the latest Poetry. Start here at Samizdat, then find further discussion at A Compulsive Reader, Exoskeleton (multiple posts–click around), and back to…
Dear Sugar, I am lonely. Truly, bone-chillingly, ceaselessly lonely. I just moved to a new city, and I’m worried no one would take time to identify the body if I…
I read The Centaur by John Updike out of funereal obligation, and had given up on it twice before, but this time put my misgivings to rest and plowed through…
Can we stop with the waving of the sharp instruments for a minute and speak rationally to this whole ugly recession mess we find ourselves currently mired in? C’mon. You…