Nonfiction

Philip Roth

Roth seems to me the most gifted novelist now writing, at least if one puts a stress on tradition in using the word novelist. He translates his intelligence and his feelings into the terms specific to serious fiction, with more firmness than Bellow, more richness than Mailer, more patience and steadiness and taste and tact…

An Interview with Bill Knott

The following interview took place on two occasions in July of this year at my apartment in Cambridge. Bill Knott drank instant iced tea, as is his custom, and talked easily once we had started. Knott is the author of nine books of poems, most of them published by small presses, beginning with the Naomi…

Bread Loaf Address

* Like most people who sense that their love affair is going to pieces, Anna Karenina and Prince Vronsky try a few desperate measures to check the disintegration. One of these measures – available only to the upper classes – was travel. They go abroad, to Italy, and there they make the acquaintance of an…

Mary Lavin: A Note

"Like a rock in the sea, she was islanded by fields, the heavy grass washing about the house, and the cattle wading in it as in water. Even their gentle stirrings were a loss when they moved away at evening to the shelter of the woods. A rainy day might strike a wet flash from…