Beyond the Support the Troops Syndrome

I recently read  a collection of essays in Brenda M. Boyle’s The Vietnam War: Topics in Contemporary North American Literature.   Academics explored authors like Bao Ninh (The Sorrow of War), Michael Herr (Dispatches), Duong…

Poetry Lover

I’ve read it every day of my life since I was thirteen. It is, among the man-made artifacts, my primary source of knowledge of the stuff of this world and the next. Its limitless archive…

The Ultimate in Jewish Nightmares

I was sitting outside at RISE with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” It was a pleasure…

Bless Your Heart

One of the most powerful responses To my novel Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine Was yours I sent you a draft You stopped reading After fifty pages It was the chapter in which the Israeli…

It’s Michelle Yeoh’s Face

A skeptical friend asked why I like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon so much… so the following, off the top of my head, even though I recognize de gustibus non est disputandum… Why is it the best (for…

The Last Sentence of Middlemarch

For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number…