The Novelist as Plate Spinner
Don’t you hate it when you are deep into reading a novel, and the author refers to something you can’t remember? You come across a line like, “Of course, Bob never would have divorced Jill if it weren’t for what…
Tag: David Mitchell
Intensity: Choosing Between the Past and Present Tenses
“Why isn’t this in the past tense?” Was the question. “By definition, all stories occur in the past.” I was stumped. There I was sitting in my writing workshop, years into a novel about which I had thought of absolutely…
My Adventures in Photo Realism
For Valentine’s Day in 2009 my husband and I got tickets to a New Yorker event called “Love Is Strange” where Jeffrey Eugenides was going to speak about love and literature. That February, I was finishing my dissertation that included…
These are a Few of Our Favorite Reads
Do you really need another list of books to read? To those questioners, I ask: How can you possibly have too many lists of books to read? That’s like telling a party guest that they have brought too many cupcakes….