The Boston Globe’s David Mehegan wrote a piece on the year-end closing of Avenue Victor Hugo bookshop. Maybe he got Vince McCaffrey’s 4 page press release—which like so many things dedicated booksellers do, flew in the face of conventional wisdom (keep it short). Anyway, Mehegan was properly reverential and sympathetic. But in the end I …
I had a conversation with Daniel Mason, the young author of The Piano Tuner and the subject of books we read when we were young came up. I had recently watched Milos Forman’s film version of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and was thinking of the other books that were part of …
Three very different writers remind me why I don’t lose interest in this ongoing conversation with the literary planet/nation. I’m hoping that’s also why they (these talks) might be viewed as fresh and interesting. I’m not bound to anything but my own curiosity and the call and response riffing that a good conversation that produce …
Busy week for me. I’m talking to Dorothy Allison about her republished story collection, editor and poet Jill Bialosky about her fine first novel, House Under Snow, and Mark Winegardner about his short stories and the world of writing, he being the chairman of creative writing at Florida State University…
"I'm a very unprofessional person. All I care about is working with people I like and respect."
One of the good reasons to read the Boston Globe is the appearance of Katherine Powers’ column, A Reading Life. Always, or almost always on the money, this weeks entry focuses on diaries—something I am acutely interested in—as I try for the umpteenth time in my life to keep track of well...That’s the nub of …
“One of the good reasons to read the Boston Globe…” –Oct. 6, 2002 Read More »
"Truffaut, Renoir and Godard looked at America, loved the films there and ploughed that love and that knowledge back into French films. No one did that in England."
On the hunt for some older hardcover fiction (Dorothy Allison, Mark Winegardner), I stopped by Avenue Victor Hugo Bookstore on Newbury Street. I was neither shocked nor surprised but indeed saddened, by the news that Vince [McCaffrey] has decided to close his 27-year-old shop by the end of the year. I am sure I will …
“On the hunt for some older hardcover fiction…” –Oct. 3, 2002 Read More »
One of the seasonal blessings of each year is the fall publication of Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Stories and Essays, which has been expanded in recent years to include Travel Writing, Mystery Writing, Sports Writing, Science Writing, Recipes and this year—a Dave Eggers (hmm) guest-edited Best Non-Essential Reading (more hmmm). Beyond my quibbles about the …
"I don’t think it’s as easy to pigeonhole me as it might be for somebody else who just has an MFA and it looks like they were groomed to be a professional writer."
