Why Write?
Where does all this leave us? There can be no conclusion except that writing, aside from speaking, is the most human activity.
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Who I Am Is Everyone: The Millions Interviews John Haskell
Conscious and unconscious, although they’re obviously not the same, seem the same when I’m writing.
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William Gaddis and American Justice
'Frolic' is full of a neurotic vernacular of Americana that purls and perfectly personifies the sue-happy, media-soaked years during which Gaddis constructed it.
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Doses of Medicine: The Words and Wisdom of Louise Glück
Glück's work has always “spoken” to me more than many poets because she examines the concerns I have about being in the world: loneliness and being alone, searching for happiness, and desiring to have my feelings validated, though they often aren’t.
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Addiction, Apathy, and Sputtering through Life: On Hugh Sheehy’s The Invisibles
Though many of the stories have an element of mystery, Sheehy isn’t interested in finding out who did what -- he knows the dramatic cornucopia lies elsewhere, with the living and the mistakes they have to examine in light of the dead.
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Living Letters: On Gass’s Life Sentences and Theroux’s Estonia
No one has written a better introduction to Gass’s fiction than he does here, laying out why he wrote his magnum opus in one stark sentence: “I wrote The Tunnel out of the conviction that no race or nation is better than any other, and no nation or race is worse.”
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Treasure Unearthed: Sir Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial
The Englishman Sir Thomas Browne lived in an era rich in destruction, including constant European wars, plagues, fires and the regicide of Charles the First, as Browne himself witnessed. It is no wonder death and the processes of burial should be the subject of his most celebrated work.
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