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Four Fictions 4 Jan 2013 | 04:13 am
The feature well of this week’s issue of Washington City Paper is dedicated to fiction for the first time in a long time. I sifted through the 50-odd submissions to pick three short stories, and also ...
Ten 2012 Books I Wish Received More Attention in 2012 3 Jan 2013 | 06:23 am
I hesitate to say something simpler, like “Ten Overlooked 2012 Books”—these days even the books that dominate chatter about literary fiction generate such little attention in the wider world that even...
New Yorker Magazine; Fiction; Keywording 7 May 2012 | 10:23 pm
You’re reading a novel. “What’s it about?” somebody asks. What do you say? The question grates; there’s no good answer for it, no easy way to address it. Book reviewers who are trained to avoid all b...
Seven Things I Think I Think About Book Reviews 24 Apr 2012 | 10:28 pm
Last Sunday I took part in a panel at the Writer’s Center titled “The Future of the Book Review,” joined by the Washington Post‘s Dennis Drabelle and the Washington Independent Review of Books‘ David ...
#fictionpulitzergate 18 Apr 2012 | 09:47 pm
“There’s something amiss,” fumed Michael Cunningham, one of the three members of the Pulitzer Prize fiction jury whose work was undone—or at least unsettled—by the Pulitzer board, which couldn’t pick ...
Some Housekeeping Notes 16 Apr 2012 | 10:31 pm
1. Ron Slate, who runs the thoughtful blog Above the Seawall, invited me and 11 other writers to recommend a recent work of fiction. I wrote about Lionel Shriver‘s new novel, The New Republic, which y...
A Novel Is a Pattern 4 Apr 2012 | 09:27 pm
Colm Toibin: The novel is not a moral fable or a tale from the Bible, or an exploration of the individual’s role in society; it is not our job to like or dislike characters in fiction, or make judgme...
The Discipline of Form and the Love of an Educated Heart 1 Apr 2012 | 09:15 pm
From a 1959 essay, “Epitaph for the Beat Generation,” included the new anthology of John Leonard‘s essays, Reading for My Life: [The Beats] proved at least one thing more. That poetry, painting, musi...
The World Is Already Filled to Bursting 28 Mar 2012 | 08:51 pm
Lawrence Weschler on why he doesn’t write fiction: [T]he part of my sensibility which I demonstrate in nonfiction makes fiction an impossible mode for me. That’s because for me the world is already f...
An Interesting Neutrality 25 Mar 2012 | 08:57 pm
In the Wall Street Journal, Lee Sandlin discusses two hard-boiled crime authors whose work has recently been anthologized, Paul Cain and David Goodis. I’m pretty familiar with Goodis, but Cain (no rel...
