Category Archives: Uncategorized

Louise brings a commitment to education and a breadth of personal experience likely to be as diverse as any American writer today. She is compared to American writers Elizabeth Hardwick and Renata Adler — not only for her brief and … Continue reading →

that most of what I read now seems empty. Empty by those under the age of forty because they are just kids, empty under the age of fifty because they still don’t know — we know nothing at all until … Continue reading →

Of course, I don’t know how Paul thinks when he is alone, or even in company. I can only tell how he acts. And how Peggi acts. Which is as if everything is of interest. Which is as if a … Continue reading →

The strangest thing about the brain is the way it remembers, or doesn’t. As in this party, in 2004, with my closest friends, Margaret and Kim. I remember it, surely; it was a great occasion. And yet it seems eons … Continue reading →

Good news is when you’ll be teaching American Literature at a university in the fall. Even better is when you can do a section on Louise Gluck: some lines of hers: I think it would have been better to love … Continue reading →

Once I had a friend who sat for days on the white stone steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, finally going in to pray. Her prayer was for Jesus to show her his love — or more precisely, to … Continue reading →

If I could tell my 23 year old self one thing, for all those years in my twenties I sat on hard chairs in anonymous rooms with girls who’d been raped and assaulted in their own families, it would be … Continue reading →

Two of my favorite people in the world revere Philip Guston — and one recently gifted me with a biography of him by Guston’s only child, Musa Mayer. This was a revelation for me, particularly when the Guston description of … Continue reading →

I think that growing up my friends and I in NYC were unduly encouraged to look at our problems. Therapy was in vogue and therapy was about analyzing problems and devoting serious study to them. It’s hard to get out … Continue reading →