BIG OTHER, gracious blog, has been letting me post my ideas about Dante’s Divine Comedy. The basic question: Why should…
Style as Imitation
1. My father, who once trained as a baker, taught me when I was a kid how to bake an…
Nuggets from Markson’s The Last Novel – more added 6/8
You have to read fifteen hundred books in order to write one. Flaubert put it. *** People who more immediately…
What do you want to be? Who are you? Now what do you want to be?
Anne K. Yoder recently pointed out this Susan Sontag quote to me (it’s from the opening of her…
Samuel Beckett’s Shorter Plays
Samuel Beckett’s shorter plays were written in the second half of his life. After the ‘Siege in the Room’ of…
James Kaelen’s Best of 2009
When John asked me to compose some sort of “best of” list for 2009, I thought immediately of film. Though…