Writing and other relationships.
On Robert’s Frost’s 80th birthday, he was honored at a dinner at Amherst College. When he spoke, he responded to the often-quoted line; “poets die young” by saying that they …
On Robert’s Frost’s 80th birthday, he was honored at a dinner at Amherst College. When he spoke, he responded to the often-quoted line; “poets die young” by saying that they …
I renew my faith in great writing by turning back to my usual suspects: Richard Ford, Don DeLillo, Tim O’Brien, Joyce Carol Oates, and David Long. Like most superlatives, “great” …
“The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, color-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read. He should also be …
‘I never knew a man who wished himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires it for himself.” A. Lincoln (March 24, 1864) In …
The Gettysburg Address casts an understandably long shadow on Lincoln’s other oratory triumphs. It emerged from one of the most horrific battles in our history – 8,000 soldiers in a …
Note to readers: Contemporaries of Thomas Jefferson would not be surprised that he left explicitly detailed instructions for the creation of his tombstone. “A plain die or cube of 3 …
When I read Dennis Lehane, I think of The Flying Wallendas. He deftly walks the curiously thin line between fiction and literature. The first draft of his novel, A Drink …
Early in his novel, The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy brings the character of Lila Wingo to life with this brief paragraph. “She saw the world through a dazzling prism of …
John Updike’s prose was so rich and intimate, I never felt compelled to pry into his life beyond the printed page. But his final book, Endpoint and Other Poems is an invitation …
“What is this secret sin; this untold tale. That art cannot extract, not penance cleanse? Horace Walpole, 1768 On that bright, crisp Wednesday morning, there was the lingering smell of …