Mentors: James Baldwin
He missed the first class. In fact, he missed the first three.
January 6th, 2012“Hurt Into Poetry: On Poetry and Greece”By Stephanos Papadopoulos
Los Angeles Review of Books
Mentors: Stanley Cavell
I was inchoate and jelly-like in graduate school (kind of like a slime mold), but Cavell was kind to me anyway.
January 5th, 2012
Mentors: Siddhartha Deb
While a student of his I often felt the tectonic plates of my own opinions and tightly-held ideas loosen or shift.
January 5th, 2012
Mentors: Marianne Moore
"One may be pardoned, yes I know / One may, for love undying."
January 3rd, 2012
Mentors: Marvin Mudrick
I would not tear papers apart — say they're no good and say they don't work — unless I believed that all of you are capable of writing good fiction.
December 30th, 2011
Mentors: J.H. Prynne
I sometimes say that Jeremy Prynne taught me everything I know about poetry: which is why I know nothing about poetry.
December 28th, 2011
Mentors: Alison Leslie Gold
What Gold modeled for me was the idea that the writer delivers stories that the reader needs. The point is to do that job well.
December 28th, 2011
Mentors: Barry Hannah
"There are some howlers among the pros as delectable as the successes and just as fine a tool of learning."
December 26th, 2011
My Disappointment Critic
I hadn’t realized until Wood was off my pedestal that I’d built one. That I’d sunk stock in the myth of a great critic.
November 7th, 2011
The Most Versatile of Mystics
On insiders, outsiders, and the debate over Sri Ramakrishna’s sexuality.
October 6th, 2011
Martin Beck Has a Cold
The police procedural is rich with political implications, a feature fundamental to Sjöwall and Wahlöö's literary accomplishment.
August 5th, 2011
Model Villages, Short Stories, and Other Miniatures
When it comes to trying to make a piece of fiction, scaling down is an essential strategy. The world has "scalability" in spades.
July 25th, 2011
Magicland
I’m not equating him with Hitler, mind you, or Joe Smith or Jim Jones. I’m just trying to understand my own compulsion.
July 1st, 2011
The Mysterious Island
I'm writing this because I just found out that my favorite bookseller in the world is dead.
June 11th, 2011
Man is Not Cat Food
Are we in danger, then, of a widespread, coordinated, animal revolt?
June 6th, 2011
Authors
Percival Everett
"Read. Always read. No one can take that away from you."... More
Jon Wiener
... More
Genres
Nonfiction
"There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them.... More
SF
"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it." — F... More
Film
"There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education." — Will Rogers... More
Art & Architecture
"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." — Frank Zappa... More
Biography & Autobiography
"I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead." — Samuel Goldwyn... More
Comics
"All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated." — Comics Code, 1954... More