What would it feel like to live in a world that was on the bumpy two-lane highway of repair, not the expressway to destruction? I often wonder about this, precisely because it’s so hard to imagine. I’m conscious of having an inner map of the world (something … [Read more...]

Some things that have happened lately: Last Saturday afternoon, a man rang my doorbell. He introduced himself by his first name, said he didn’t mean to bother me but he was homeless, trying to get some money, and wondered if I would pay him to sweep the leaves … [Read more...]

Last Sunday (8/7/05), the NY Times Book Review ran an exceedingly irritating essay by Rachel Donadio. Entitled “Truth Is Stronger Than Fiction,” the piece finds merit in the proposition, advanced by V.S. Naipaul, that “nonfiction is better suited than fiction to … [Read more...]

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been caught up in time travel, reading Daniel Singer’s Whose Millennium? Theirs or Ours?, a work of post-fall-of-the-Berlin-wall political economy. Published in 1999, the book is on the one hand strikingly relevant—with the … [Read more...]

Stories of suicide are big these days. I happen to be writing one (my novel The Company of Cannibals, about a charismatic performance artist/spiritual leader who ends her own life after asking that her disciples consume her remains); perhaps this helps to account … [Read more...]

It was too, too hot and humid today, which made it a good day to behave like a leisured, cultured bourgeoise and repair to the New Museum in Chelsea, where I could enjoy several hours of air conditioning. I’d been wanting to go anyway since reading a review of … [Read more...]

Here’s how I heard about what happened in London: Winston and I were in Maine for a few days of vacation and to see the premier of my friend Bea’s “Downeast Chamber Opera,” THE SINGING BRIDGE (a smashing success, as it turned out). On the morning of our first full … [Read more...]

I’m on vacation, so this won’t be much of a post. But I wanted to offer this quote from Claudia Rankine’s striking book Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (subtitled An American Lyric): The sadness is not really about George Bush or American optimism; the sadness lives in … [Read more...]

This is going to be an exceedingly informal post because: I’m at the Goddard MFA residency, it’s a steambath outside and in, the only air conditioners are in rooms dedicated to the efficient functioning of photocopiers and printers, and I’m in a funk for reasons … [Read more...]

I’ve been writing a long review of Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days in the context of his earlier fiction. It’s been fascinating to spend a bunch of time with his work. I very much enjoyed The Hours when it first came out, at which time I read it completely … [Read more...]