A writer’s desk
Yes, it’s snowing.
Seeing the light
As if I don’t have enough to read, the always estimable Virginia Quarterly Review has just opened its archives to onliners. Kudos, Waldo, you’ve been listening!
BibliOdyssey
An addictive blog. Try this post first about board games through the centuries.
Is it plagiarism, cento, or prose riff?
I’m having great fun learning to use style as a form of literary allusion, not just as a way of conversing with the gods (or perhaps hoping some of their...
And now let us praise uncertainties
Canadian poet Dennis Cooley says in his essay Breaking & Entering (Thoughts on Line Breaks): I’ve been struck for some time how much formal departure disturbs readers. That’s not surprising,...
Separation anxiety
It’s a strange feeling to come to the end of a novel after more than three years of sole custody. You don’t want to let your characters go – can...
Give & Take
There’s something delightfully eccentric in publishing a book that no one can buy about a consummate jazz pianist who moonlights as a latter-day Robin Hood, stealing diamonds and BMWs in...
To thwart the reflex to cliché
Harper’s Wyatt Mason often infuriates me, which I reckon is altogether one of the best reasons to read literary criticism. (His claim of a ‘preening literary self-consciousness’ in Bolaño’s The...
A reverberation from within
I’m still surprised by how often we find what we need at just the right moment. From the 1999 The Paris Review interview with Peter Matthiessen: Of course, there are...
Another Mortal Ghost review
Apologies to Stephanie of Someone’s Read It Already for not noticing this one sooner.
A reviewer’s own magic
Frank Cottrell Boyce has written a truly magical review of Philippa Pearce’s posthumously published A Finder’s Magic, a review which reminds us why the best children’s literature is timeless and...
Every book falls apart
Anne Enright on what she learned (and didn’t) at her creative writing course: The book went in the bin (a few box files sitting on my bottom shelf) and I...