Writing

First published in Harper’s, November 2006.

Thomas Bernhard, the ranting, death-obsessed Austrian novelist and playwright who died in 1989, was the ultimate Nestbeschmutzer, soiling his country with screeds against the landscape, the people, and their history. (more…)

First published in The Believer, July, 2003.

The Genre Artist

If a story takes place, as we are told stories do, then who or what does it take that place from, and why is an acquisition verb—take—necessary to describe the activity of stories? (more…)

First published in Conjunctions: 29, 1997.

THE HARMING OF MEANING

I mean to discuss certain reveries of reading that occurred during the interment of childhood I served in my parents’ home, reveries often centering around Seuss and his extreme attack on sense. (more…)