Why Women Don’t Make Top Ten Lists: Prose on Prose

Dear CF,
Laura Miller’s article on Publishers Weekly’s top ten list led me to Francine Prose’s article, “Scent of a Woman’s Ink,” which was published in Harper’s Magazine in 1998.  It’s not available to nonsubscribers but it’s a formidable piece and relevant still, though it’s equally interesting to think about the ways in which some things [...]

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Whip It: Girls Need to See This Movie

Someone once said they would go out tonight but they haven’t got a stitch to wear, and I’m feeling that way after watching Whip It: in need of clothes and a destination.
Having seen it, I’m predictably fascinated by roller derby, awed by Juliette Lewis, and delighted with Drew Barrymore and Kristin Wiig. I’m all-around pretty [...]

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The Pleasure of Reading: Beginnings, Newness

[I'm rereading Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler. It's a reminder of things I'd forgotten now that I do so much reading on my computer. From time to time I'll post an excerpt here.]
You derive a special pleasure from a just-published book, and it isn’t only a book you are taking with [...]

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The Bitch

Dear M.,
I just ate two tamales happily microwaved into melty Trader Joe’s delight, and feel fortified to write what I was going to originally try to work into my earlier post.  On one of my recent library scavenging hunts, I picked up Norman Mailer’s The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing.  I read it yesterday while [...]

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Open Secrets, Indeed

Dear M.,
I haven’t read Open Secrets, but am puttering through The Lives of Girls and Women.  I picked it up specifically because it is The Munro’s only novel, and I want to see why she never returned to the form.
The NPR interview with Lorrie Moore sounds horrid, but worth the quote about Iraq.  That moment [...]

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Open Secrets

Dear CF,
Did you catch Michael Krasny’s interview of Lorrie Moore on NPR? He’s a fool, and she suffered him. Having seen Moore eviscerate fans, I was unprepared for this warmer, more pliant Moore whom Krasny repeatedly and unctuously described as having a gorgeous voice. When she said her latest novel was about how we got [...]

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The Duggars and Casanova

Dear Millicent,
In honor of the Duggars’ announcement of expecting their 19th child, I offer some of the interesting tidbits I have gathered while reading Medical History of Contraception by Norman E. Himes.  I got the book while on a lark at the public library, and have enjoyed it immensely.  I have no idea how sound [...]

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Morning Sweats

Hello darling,
Drinking coffee, sweating, not planning my class as I should.  Instead, I was wondering if you had ever read:

Munro’s “The Ticket,” or “Home”
The piece in this week’s New Yorker about the death penalty?

Also, have you seen the poster for Love Happens?  If so, I would like to discuss all three.
Happy early edge of a long [...]

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Growing Pains

Dear Millicent,
I am supposed to be writing up some grand paperwork, which means that I am eating peanut brittle and reading Joan Didion.  Every summer I teach the youths, sleep on a dorm bed, and begin my annual affair with Dame Didion.  It usually starts by accident (a common excuse for an affair), and once [...]

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Respect the Cock

Dear CF,
I learned yesterday that in my city one can legally own no more than 12 chickens. This puzzled me. Why 12? At first I thought it might have to do with egg packaging—grocery stores do tend to sell chicken thighs and breasts in packages of six or twelve. Maybe we’ve just internalized the base-12 [...]

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