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."
"I think we are really entering or have entered a post-literate age. Like ancient Egypt, where only the high priests still know how to read."
Tupac Shakur's legacy of poetry, rap, passion, politics, and scatology continues with the recent release of Until the End of Time, a collection of raps originally recorded during his "Makaveli" period.
"If I couldn't do my work, it would be as if someone took the air out of me. It was a necessity to survive. So it would have been that or die. I didn't have a choice. So I just worked my ass off."
"The difference between a con man and a writer is that a writer thinks up these elaborate stories and puts them on the page but a con man has the guts to see if they really work."
I was sinning in the shower this morning, thinking about the six Tony nominations this past season for Arthur Miller's revival of The Crucible on Broadway. What is there about America that craves witch-hunts? Damned if I know. And I was wishing I was in Las Vegas, "the city that has re-discovered Sin," according to …
The Lost Boys removed
from the coffin's lip like
tea cups stuck to a saucer
"My books superficially are okay and any problems that exist are so large that most editors don't either have the time or language or critical intelligence to tell me what they are."
