I read the following in 2005; Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine came out in 2015: Ironic essay, novelistic narrative, autobiographical fragment, historical fact. Flight of fantasy—the synthetic power of the novel is capable of combining…
In the constellation of geniuses, he is a blinding light and father of us all. (I exclude Shakespeare because for Shakespeare no human epithet is enough.)… I think Ulysses is the most diverting, brilliant, intricate,…
Have you longed for the chance to sit outside and write while listening to the birds, smelling the sweetness of the grass and blooming trees, watching the beauty of the dancing trees, and feeling the…
There was nothing to do but wait it out. My mind has to become accustomed to loneliness. And when one is alone there is nothing to do but study. — I.B. Singer, In My Father’s…
Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. Her oral history, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, appeared this spring in the US. Translated by Bela Shayevich, the book is a compelling…
I am glad to have read The Ink Dark Moon, Jane Hirshfeld’s translations, with the aid of Mariko Aratani, of the Heian Court’s poets—Izumi Shikibu and Ono No Komachi. Several of Kerouac’s writing maxims came to…
“The calling that I profess,” replied DQ, “does not permit me to do otherwise. An easy pace, pleasure, and repose — those things were invented for delicate courtiers; but toil, anxiety, and arms — they…
Dear Bella Levenshteyn Let Emily Dickinson reassure you– Much Madness is divinest Sense — To a discerning Eye — Much Sense — the starkest Madness — ‘Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail —…
From a young woman’s fan letter to Marcel Proust: And after three years of uninterrupted reading, my conclusion is this: I understand nothing, but absolutely nothing. Dear Marcel Proust, don’t be a poseur, descend for…