"Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." — Stephen King
November 6, 2014
I have always felt more at home with questions than with answers, and I gravitate toward poets who explore rather than explain. Mary Oliver, one of my favorites, writes in this poem, “I believe I will never quite know. Though I play at the edge of … Read More
October 30, 2014
Anthony Doerr believes that literary writers should “strive toward complexity, toward questions, and away from certainty, away from stereotype.” This novel, which is a page-turner, one worth getting up early to read, demonstrates that he follows his own advice. Set in France and Germany during 1934-2014, … Read More
October 23, 2014
How does a humorist write about death? This is what I wondered when I opened Delia Ephron‘s memoir, which has a piece called “Losing Nora” about her famous sister. She relies a lot on the formula that we see in the quote above: she starts by … Read More
October 16, 2014
What happens when a novel begins in the middle of the story? There is a certain awkwardness. You can anticipate that there will be a lot of skipping around, which requires concentration. Is it worth it? In the case of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, the … Read More
October 9, 2014
It’s hard to over-state how highly Robert Burns is revered by people from Scotland. In 2009, this 18th century poet was voted “the greatest Scot” by viewers of a Scottish television station. Every year on January 25th, Scots from around the world meet to recite the poem … Read More
October 2, 2014
In this 1938 book about educational theory, John Dewey continues: “But they are periods of genuine reflection only when they follow after times of more overt action and are used to organize what has been gained . . .” He famously observed that you don’t learn from … Read More
September 25, 2014
Mark Haddon’s extraordinary novel The Red House appears to be built on the ideas and style of the essays written by Michel de Montaigne in the 1500s, and I can’t think of a better, more inventive, choice. As we see with the “double within ourselves” line, he … Read More
September 18, 2014
The poem continues: “. . . only hum some low green note, roll their pinecones down the empty streets and blame it, with a shrug, on the cold wind. During the day they sleep inside their furry bark, clouds shredding like ancient lace above their crowns.” These … Read More
September 11, 2014
This is not a book for readers who hate getting lost when a scene on page 105 doesn’t get resolved until page 340. It is for readers who would like to see how a literary genius describes the challenges and boredom of a normal life. The story’s … Read More
September 4, 2014
Novelists make assumptions about their readers’ interest in technical details, whether they’re writing about sabotage, romance or philosophy. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is written by a philosophy professor who assumes we want to know the technical details of her two main character’s struggle to find a … Read More
August 28, 2014
. . . and spill gold over things that tell us who we are.” This is from “Learning the Language” by Henry Taylor. It’s a beautifully constructed poem that follows strict rules of rhyme and meter. When he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986, his love … Read More
August 21, 2014
In the tenth anniversary edition of the memoir The Liar’s Club, Mary Karr writes, “Just as the novel form once took up experiences of urban industrialized society that weren’t being addressed in sermons or epistles or epic poems, so memoir — with its single, intensely personal … Read More
August 14, 2014
When Pride and Prejudice turned 200 years old last year, the Guardian ran a wonderful collection of short pieces about the main characters by a variety of writers, who said the sorts of thing that literary people say when they are out partying: Mr. Bennett is a … Read More
August 7, 2014
“Danger” might not be the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Robert Frost. And yet, look at what he says in this article: “If poetry isn’t understanding all, the whole word, then it isn’t worth anything. Young poets forget that poetry must include … Read More
July 31, 2014
What should the first sentence in a great novel do? Set the tone, establish the location and perhaps introduce the main character? The first sentence in Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout does more than that. It gives us the dying river image, which prepares us … Read More