First the good news: In spite of every dour pronouncement I’ve heard over the four decades I’ve called myself a writer, and probably going even farther back, literature as we know it is not in crisis. Reading is not obsolete. Books are not doomed. Print is not archaic, nor is it likely to become so….
Let the light beyellow but not enough to stingthe eye, close enough to turnoff morning candle-lit, quiet,incandescent, enough to seebeside, clear after morning,to burn on not cold yetnot quite bright enough to readby, and just near absentmindedlyeach night
You have been away too long.For pleasure. On business.You are coming home and the almanacpredicts heat waves, hurricanes,other unlikelihoods. The old barin our town is serving seven cocktailsfor the price of six. The deck is open.Pleasure. You are coming homewith your pregnant girlfriendwhom no one has met. The babywill be named Bullet or Hunter or…
The Look2 essay series, which replaces our print book reviews, takes a closer look at the careers of accomplished authors who have yet to receive the full appreciation that their work deserves. Reviews of new books can still be found on our blog at http://pshares.org/ I. In her 1977 novel, Quartet in Autumn,…
I bargained with God once—even wanted my poor mother—in a flooded cave in central Florida. Let me out. Let me finish my book. For about three electric seconds the fanged rock through which I crawled yielded like warm flesh. * Another time, I got lost inside a shipwreck, in the North Channel between Lakes…
Leda would take the train. She hadn’t been on one in some time. A few days before, she read about a woman who killed herself on the track. She just lay there until it came. You never heard of that anymore—it seemed to have gone out of style. She didn’t think it was the best…
This interview about the Blacksmith House Poetry Series, which will celebrate its fortieth anniversary in 2013, was edited and condensed from a tape recording made as part of the Cambridge Historical Society’s oral history initiative. Gail Mazur is the author of six books of poetry, including They Can’t Take That Away from Me, a…
It always seems wrong to me that Kawabata Yasunari’s strange and wonderful fiction is left out of the ongoing conversation about the future of the novel. The debate in the U.S. is often framed in terms of fiction vs. nonfiction (David Shields, Sheila Heti), or realistic vs. metafiction (Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Milan Kundera,…
Growing up, there were always two laws.My mother, the greater, the greatestWho made enemies if necessary outOf the trashman or the paperboy.Queen without her court and details,Commands so precise, you could notFollow if you were not one of her students;If you did not know her nobility you mightThink she was crazy in her house dressStanding…
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