The Strange World of Shirley Jackson
“Shirley and Stanley lived with their children and 30,000 books in a rambling Victorian house near the post office in the village where Shirley had so memorably set her classic…
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Michael Berger
118 posts
The Heroic Return of the Baffler
After a hiatus of a few years, the intellectually-engaging, always interesting, often confrontational and downright maverick literary/cultural magazine The Baffler has returned! I just picked up my copy at the…
What Happened During The Blackout
Just when I thought I was unique, just as I’ve been spending the last six-odd months editing a short story about the misadventures of retail workers during a city-wide blackout…
The Joys Of Artists’ Television Access
I’ve been regularly attending events and film screenings at Artists’ Television Access on Valencia Street in San Francisco for almost a year now. I’ve gone as both volunteer and audience member, in…
Anarchist Book Gets a Boost From Beck
“But even before the official pub date, The Coming Insurrection benefited from an ‘endorsement’ from Glenn Beck. As part of a seven-minute rant on Fox News in July, he said,…
The Boring, Unplayful, Unoriginal Global Novel
“What are the consequences for literature? From the moment an author perceives his ultimate audience as international rather than national, the nature of his writing is bound to change. In…
Cars are Always Funny and So are Landlords and Sex
“The affect, here, stems from the naive individual’s skewed encounter with systems larger than himself, an encounter which, reprised again and again, plays out Bergson’s first rule of comedy: that…
San Francisco’s Demographic Shift
“San Francisco’s Marcus Books has long been a gathering place for African-American authors such as Maya Angelou. But last year, manager Blanche Richardson faced the realization that the 50-year-old bookstore…
You Mean Writing Can’t Be My Career?!
“What the profiles fail to reveal is that the literary apprenticeship is a lengthy one for the majority, that getting published at all is difficult, and to get paid enough…
Things Not To Do In Your Debut Novel
“To sit down to read a novel is a mere fraction of the commitment required to write one, but in both cases the commitment must be made, and it needs…
Writing While (Not) Loving, Loving While (Not) Writing
“Edmund Wilson encouraged his second wife Mary McCarthy’s first forays into fiction by shutting her in a room for three hours and asking her to write a story. Author Shirley…
Using Genre As A Tool
“But the idea that genre is a tool, not a prophecy goes beyond combating genre snobbery, I think — it’s actually helpful for writers to think about when crafting their…