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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 …
Reciprocity and Reunion with Richard Ford
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” …
6655321: The Clockwork Orange Dilemma
“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 …
Shadow. Random thoughts on Lincoln’s Greatest Speech. Part 2
‘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 …
Shadow. Random thoughts on Lincoln’s greatest speech
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 …
The quiet voice. Jefferson’s first inaugural.
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 …
The writer and the tightrope. The fiction of Dennis Lehane.
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 …
Pat Conroy, Transcendence, and My Reading Life
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 …
Some scattered thoughts on EndPoint and Other Poems by John Updike.
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 …
Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Veil of Sin
“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 …
