This story first appeared in Harper’s.
I was fortunate to find a person who would solve my solitude. She would use her hands on my person until it was soothed. She would chop at my husk, then spoon out my sorrow and be its keeper. (more…)
Writing
Flare Gun
This is a deleted passage from a very early draft of The Flame Alphabet. (more…)
The Moors
This is an excerpt of a story that appears in the current issue of Tin House (#42).
At work today, Thomas the Dead, as he had privately named himself, made a grave miscalculation by using baby talk with a colleague. (more…)
Thomas Bernhard
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…)
On the Lyric Essay
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…)
Chemical Seuss
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…)
On Not Growing Up
First published in Conjunctions: 50, 2008, and Harper’s, August 2008.
—How long have you been a child?
—Seventy-one years. (more…)
Portable Slalom Course
The purpose of this article is simply to address some of the common questions and misconceptions the uninitiated may have on the subject of the portable slalom course. (more…)
