Recent posts

That, I Didn’t Expect

1 minute read

Hi. You guys are moving me, and I’m trying to get some information about where my stuff is.

Peck, Peck, Peck

1 minute read

A quick update to last week’s comment on Dale Peck’s cranky outburst occasioned by his review of Rick Moody’s The Black Veil. Bill has continued the discussion on his site, usefully reminding us of B.R. Myers’ similar Summer 2001 screed published in the Atlantic, and directing us to Jonathan Yard...

Return of the Depressed

1 minute read

Okay, I’m not really depressed so much as crushed under the weight of the belongings I’ve got to get sorted out and into boxes in the next 24 hours. I’d hoped that, returning from NOLA to SoCal, the long division of my stuff would end. My last move, a year ago, was a sorting into three piles: thi...

Yikes

2 minute read

Should a reviewer of contemporary fiction actually be required to, say, like contemporary fiction?

Academic Obsolescence, Indeed

1 minute read

Mail is taking a while to catch up with me these days, given that it’s got to go through the postal service, campus mail, my department, campus mail, and the postal service again before it gets to me. So needless to say, I’m a little behind on some things. But I last week received this letter [Ed...

Not Bloody Likely

1 minute read

Um, hi. I’m trying to get an estimate on a small move.

Hmmm…

1 minute read

I spent a chunk of this past weekend hanging out in my apartment, not wanting to think about either the quantity of work I have to do in the next two weeks or the fact that somehow all of my belongings in this apartment need to transport themselves back to California at the end of that same two w...

Silence

less than 1 minute read

Well, I managed to conclude the conclusion in a temporarily satisfactory way, despite the deafening roar of absolute silence on your end. Okay, point taken. I’ll do my own work. Sigh.

Here’s a Question

1 minute read

So, I’m nearing the conclusion of the conclusion of the book I’ve been working on for the last umpteen years. Which of course doesn’t mean I’m done — there’s still the introduction to be written, and the first chapter to be polished up a bit.

July 9, 1982

1 minute read

Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of the crash of Pan Am 759, which fell victim to a wind shear during takeoff from New Orleans International, plowing into a nearby Kenner neighborhood, killing eight people on the ground and all 146 aboard.