Nathanael West

Let us enjoy the surprises, the challenges of literature in all languages, in translation and otherwise. Let us contemplate the writer, too, writing in all her forms. Let us see how we are.

As Dorothy Parker said, and I agree, "Wildly funny, desperately sad, brutal and kind, furious and patient, there was no other like Nathanael West."

In America today, to mix art and politics in any literal sense is considered either passé or taboo, but in the 1930s it was a vein of practice mined by many writers and artists.

Gustave Flaubert wrestles with the ravages of old age, religion, the joy and heartbreak of love, children, and more. Though each of these stories is just some 40 pages long, they loom larger in the imagination.

These 21 essays "defy" rather than "define" the sometimes accused staid genre of the essay -- writing that can be too dry and too full of argument.

It wasn't lost on me this week that progress was recently made on the "canonization" of David Foster Wallace.

Writing is hard. But it's easy, too, like talking and baking. Baking isn't hard. It's the easiest thing to do in the kitchen, besides the microwave...

When you find yourself agreeing with one of those Sunday morning talking heads, remember, it's like carnival food -- it tastes good, but it isn't good for you.

I have a book festish for the back matter of biographies and histories. I toggle between "selected" and "annotated," and back again. I even test the dreaded "further reading," but it just seemed too pushy.