The Remains of the Day

First off, my Christmas wish: Stephen Fry calling me madam every morning, and noting that the Prime Minister likes my shoes. Butler alarm clock, yes please! Birds tweet, the clock has six months worth of recorded messages in it.  And, it’s FRICKING JEEVES!
Other Brit wonders: Shameless.  A TV show starring a young James McAvoy, with [...]

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American Writers

“There exists a great politesse around women’s poetry,” Courtney Queeney writes, “and to write critically is, in some ways, to betray one’s feminine self (the part that’s supposed to blink a lot and sigh into the shadows when the menfolk start talking politics at the dinner [...]

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Daniel Alarcón Pirated My Life

Dear CF,
Just got back from hearing Daniel Alarcón—author of War by Candlelight (which I’ve read) and Lost City Radio (which I haven’t, for reasons that will become apparent)—talk about book piracy in Peru. You’ve seen the stands, you’ve read your Calvino: the subject is the fast cheap reproduction of original books and the readers and [...]

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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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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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American Idle: How Fear and Anger Drive Us To Our Fallen Work

Dear CF,
[Opening insult framed in sexual terms that broadcasts author's failure to properly express anger:] Those radio guests can suck my boob.
[Agreement plus fake announcement of topic]: I’m with you: anger and fear, weirdly understood as alienating or paralyzing emotions, are no such thing—if anything, they’re over-activating. Without anger, fear and their cousins discomfort and [...]

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Susan Boyle’s Got Balls

Dear CF,
Tonight I give you the contrarian Snuggie of blanket statements, so general it comes with sleeves:
Men are better at demanding an audience. BUT—if an audience is supplied (in teaching, say)—women go to greater lengths to please.
That is to say, I think you (and the MLA) are onto something: it’s easier to respond to a [...]

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Cafe Culture: “Working”

Carla Fran, tender churl,
I conducted an experiment in public solitude yesterday and thought I would acquaint you with the results. In some respects it resembles the challenge of looking “come-hithery” while learning the musculature of the belly-dance chest circle.
The goal: to try “working” at a “cafe” in “the city.” This is something people do. I [...]

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