“What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms.” ― Kobayashi Issa, Poems As of March 20th, we have officially entered the spring season. And while it is still disarmingly chilly and dreary in the northeast portion of the United States that I roam, the beginning buds in the trees and points of crocuses sticking up from the ground indicate that indeed warmer, longer and brighter days are ahead. It is this optimism that I...

The New York Times reports on a new study showing that high-achieving, working-class students are shunning elite schools (an unnamed list of “the 238 most selective colleges”) in favor of regional universities and community colleges. The study finds that many such students are unaware of these elite colleges, since they’re not likely to have met anyone who has attended such a place and, presumably, were not raised with the expectation...

Over the last few nights, half-longing for sleep, I've seen Lisa as she was at 14, the two of us almost side by side, about to take the front steps of East Hampton High School for the first time.

An agent friend of mine told me long ago that the best way to learn how to write well was to “read well” – meaning read quality stories, books, perhaps even recipes with nutritious ingredients rather than artificial additives. Unfortunately, I took this advice as the agent “stating the obvious,” thinking it impossible not to read good work without taking some good for it, both as a person and a writer (I think there is a...

So, when I wrote on reading drama, I was perhaps too optimistic. When I said that drama is a break from prose fiction and that it can be read more quickly, I didn’t take into account that drama, like, I suppose, all genres, can get repetitive. I made the mistake of reading only one author, a volume of six plays by Ibsen; they’re brilliant, but once you read one play about boring middle-class life, your first response is rarely to go out...

In his book The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen gives a scathing indictment of the brave new world of the internet, arguing that user-created content is lowering the standard and preventing true talent from rising above the tide of garbage. His predictions are nothing if not apocalyptic: he pictures a world where newspapers go under to HuffPo, recording companies crushed by YouTube, and the end of literature brought about by blogs. Also, I...

I wrote in my last post about the new PBS special Shakespeare Uncovered, and because I walk the walk in addition to blogging the blog, the show inspired me to open Henry V. And I have on my hard drive—taking up space that could otherwise be occupied with pictures of my cat—the collected works of Shakespeare. After the novel I’m reading now, I plan to move on to a collection of Ibsen plays. But here’s the thing: I don’t write...

It is traditional at this time of the year for folks of a reflective bent to look back on the past 12 months, consider what went well and what didn’t, ponder changes made and changes needed to be made, goals achieved and goals unrealized, and then, after bloating the body (if not the mind) with Holiday cheer, forming a list of New Year’s Resolutions. These action steps are meant to keep you focused and fortunate in the months ahead,...

Half a Dozen Disappointments:  Titus Andronicus, Local Business; Flying Lotus, Until the Quiet Comes; The Beach House, Bloom; The xx, Coexist; Cat Power, Sun; and They Went On, Who’s Afraid of Richard Dreyfuss?. Thirteen Thirteens:  Guy Capecelatro III, North for the Winter; Grizzly Bear, Shields; Dirty Ghosts, Metal Moon; Now, Now, Threads; Beak, >>; The Sea and Cake, Runner; Dictaphone, Poems from a Rooftop; Neil Young and...

These are NOT meant to be broken.