My Year in Books, 2018
Looking back, I see that I did a lot of rereading in 2018. Some of it was out of necessity (teaching), and some for pleasure. Some of it showed up … Continue reading
In Praise of Semicolons
Literary influence is usually amorphous, which is why an influence-obsessed critic like Harold Bloom has to bring in words like clinamen, tesserae, and apophrades as well as esoteric schools of … Continue reading
Q, Conspiracy, and the Novel; or, Why Portraits and Ashes Should Be Your Summer Read
Readers who perceive an esoteric subtext to my writing and who therefore keep a paranoiac tally of my cryptic allusions will recall that I have mentioned the “Q” or “Qanon” … Continue reading
My Year in Books, 2017
But let’s start with movies. Ten years ago, the Scottish musician and critic Momus observed that one of the most acclaimed films of 2007, Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish-Civil-War fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, … Continue reading
Buy Portraits and Ashes for Small Business Saturday!
There was a debate recently on social media over indie press Tyrant Books’s tweeted proclamation that “they no longer accept agented authors.” The pro-agent side argued that agents were necessary … Continue reading
Back to School: Literature and Life
Older generations of writers who had come up through the ranks of journalism (and who had often been to war) used to complain about the academic colonization of literature, particularly … Continue reading
Announcing Portraits and Ashes
As you might have guessed from yesterday’s defense of self-published literary fiction, I have independently published a novel, Portraits and Ashes. For a brief description, here is the back cover copy: … Continue reading
Literary Fiction: To Self-Publish or Not?
If American literature had been left wholly in the hands of established publishers—Ticknor and Fields, for instance—Longfellow might have remained our greatest poet. But Walt Whitman, an American, one of … Continue reading
Composition: Planned vs. Unplanned, Written vs. Typed
(Inspired loosely by this essay on planning vs. non-planning novelists.) I have written two and a half novels now, and my method seems to always be the same, despite my … Continue reading
