Tag: memoir

  • New Nonfiction Story in The MacGuffin

    I have a new nonfiction story in the Spring 2015 issue of The MacGuffin literary journal titled Fin de Siècle. It is a memoir piece about growing up in Bridgewater, Mass., in the 1970s. You can order a copy at the NewPages Magazine Webstore.

  • What is Stuff? (or How to Survive Exile in France)

    The French have the peculiar habit of referring to American and Brits collectively as “Anglo Saxons,” which isn’t exactly a racial or cultural description, but more a way of classifying a people oddly attached in their estimation to both hyper-commerce and 17th Century modes of Puritanism. To make matters worse, we Anglophones fail to observe the…

  • Batuman’s Take Down of MFA Literary Fiction

    I’m still on an Elif Batuman kick. I’ve been tracking down her essays online and I’m looking forward to reading The Possessed, which arrived in the mail yesterday. Batuman wrote a funny, blistering and brilliantly-argued essay in the London Review of Books in 2010 titled “Get a Real Degree” where she reviewed Mark McGurl’s history…

  • Why I Won’t Read Joan Didion’s “Blue Nights”

    I was late to the party when it came to reading Joan Didion. For years I had the vague sensation that Didion wasn’t for me. It was one of those unapologetic prejudices people have for certain writers, a prejudice that ended when I picked up a copy of The Year of Magical Thinking. It was…