Those of you who have arrived here hoping for a heart-racing account of how I survived the past week in Boston, brace for a letdown.Despite the images of chaos broadcast nonstop on every available channel, my hometown was not turned into “a city under siege” by the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent manhunt. This would imply that tens of thousands of residents were in imminent danger, which is, simply put, bullshit. READ MORE >>
Hope Springs Eternal at the AWP Conference
The Writing Industry Is Booming, Even if the Book Industry Isn't
Years ago, one of the big New York slicks (I have no idea which one, though Esquire leaps to mind) ran a story purporting to represent the ranking of living American fiction writers. As I recall, it included a rather scary looking pyramid of scribbled names, topped by John Updike and Saul Bellow. There were no more than a few hundred names on the entire pyramid, all of which fit on a standard blackboard. READ MORE >>
Deconstructed—Chris Ware’s Innovation
LET’S START WITH my qualifications as a critic of graphic novels: Putting aside an adolescent excursion into a stoner comic strip called the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, I have none. Worse yet, I tend to associate graphic novels with the regressive and haughty wing of hipsterism, the one that favors mope rock and off-brand beers. I guess what I’m getting at here is that I’m a nitwit. READ MORE >>
