Features & Reviews
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A Badass Biker Poet: Thom Gunn
Gunn’s work is imminently teachable in the form of Selected Poems, but it is derived from a world that now no longer exists: the Metaphysical poets drawn through the intermingling bodies of the Summer of Love: biker leather, drug haze,…
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Novelist disappears into illness, addiction
Kaye Gibbons, author of the 1987 debut best-seller Ellen Foster and several subsequent novels, is the subject of an Associated Press profile published in several newspapers and Sunday book sections over the weekend. The article traces her downfall from “vivacious”…
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The Window of Possessive Titles
One of the new window displays at Red Hill. My first contribution: the window of Possessive titles, a trend I can’t stop ranting about. Especially with novels. But still, an admirable array of authors employ this sure-fire titling method. I,…
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Typing Fast and Sitting Still
Blogging and stillness seem to be contradictory activities: I, along with many others, think of blogging as the relentless and hasty documentation of modern life on the go, news-in-brief for busybusy people. And yet what bloggers are often attempting is…
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Iran’s Regime: Marching Toward a Cliff
A special comment by Tamim Ansary, author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes The Khomeinist regime in Iran is in terminal trouble; but that doesn’t mean Iran is about to repudiate Islam and become a…
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90 Miles from Home
Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés’s stories about refugees from the Mariel Boatlift present the conflicts and loneliness of exile.
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Reading Lists on Serious Topics From the Back Pages of the Newspaper
Our view of the world is so often sculpted by front page and home page, so here is a look at some long-ongoing crises of self-determination that only occasionally surface in the news: First, Nigeria and Big Oil. I’m not…
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John Keats, Sleep
John Keats’s tribute to sleep—called, fittingly, “To Sleep”—equates it, winsomely, with death. The poem is an invocation of that state which can be elusive, particularly to those with overactive or anxious minds, or small kids, or, in my case, both.…
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A Summons To The Alps
There are lots of reasons why you might have heard of John Berger, the novelist, art critic, intellectual, farmer and screenwriter. At the same time, when people are too varied in their pursuits, they sometimes slip under the radar.
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A Writerly Respect For Death
Now I realize it is a dazzling, sunny afternoon in San Francisco. People are no doubt reading books at Zeitgeist as I advised them to this morning. Children and dogs are cavorting in the parks. In fact, right now, I’m…
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Women Resexualized? Is Meat Sexist?
Since so many of us live in this paradoxical nation that is both obviously obsessed with women’s bodies, yet has a morbid fear of wardrobe malfunctions, there is no shortage of fascinating discussions online about the interconnections of women and…
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Just For Fathers: an excerpt from A Book Of Ages
Erik Hanson’s new book, A Book Of Ages is a compendium of moments from famous lives, including triumphs, failures, odd incidents, crossed paths and other such tantalizing miscellany. Especially revealing, apropos of this special day, is the excerpt about fathers,…