When a link goes up for one of the shorter pieces I’ve written, I try to include it here, in rough chronological order. These pop up in a new window. I’ve excluded pieces that are online but require paid access, such as the archives of the Washington Post.
“I’d thought I had a firm handle on what Updike was all about-he’s the Connecticut-and-adultery guy, great stylistic chops but typing his way through familiar territory, filling up the silences of Salinger and Cheever. But have you read The Coup?”
John Updike: Writers Reflect | The Rumpus
“Precisely because it’s not drenched in mythos (a la World War II) or pathos (Vietnam), he’s free to survey both the fighting and the geopolitical repercussions with both a remarkably dispassionate eye and a storyteller’s flair.”
Review: The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, by David Halberstam
| San Francisco Chronicle
“You’ll find the work of George Saunders frequently described as “funny,” but that’s like calling a nuclear detonation “warm” – it’s true, abundantly so, but it fails to accurately convey the forces unleashed.”
Review: The Braindead Megaphone, by George Saunders | San Francisco Chronicle
“Harr is indisputably a masterful storyteller, and if anything that’s what makes this book a less than satisfactory read.”
Review: The Lost Painting, by Jonathan Harr | San Francisco Chronicle
Q: How do you feel about talking about your work in general?
A: Talking about writing? Well, I must like to do it. I mean, when I read other people’s I think they’re fatuous, but when I read my own I like what I say.
Interview with Ian Frazier | The Believer
“If you want to see something truly beautiful, try making a shrimp vomit.”
Light: Bioluminescence | The Believer
“Much of it is stagy and forced, the plot is vestigial and the characters are far from realistic. But that’s like condemning Mount Rushmore for being out of scale; it’s simply the wrong set of expectations. “
Review: The Judges, by Elie Wiesel | San Francisco Chronicle
“Disdain can drip from the pages, and yet there’s a consistent sense of the writer drawing ever closer to his subject, not farther away.”
Review: The Writer and the World, by V. S. Naipaul | San Francisco Chronicle
“Ignore the airs of quasi-memoir–a swamp of a notion, if ever there was one–and find your own path through the stories.”
Review: When Eve Was Naked, by Josef Skvorecky | San Francisco Chronicle
“Although not autobiographical, “Mangoes” clearly draws its ambling force from his own cherished memories, sense of family and pride of place.”
Review: The House of Blue Mangos, by David Davidar | San Francisco Chronicle
“The strain of overreaching prose takes a backseat to concerns about the facts presented: Some contradict, some seem grounded in arguable logic and others seem flat-out wrong.”
Review: The Floating Brothel, by Sian Rees | San Francisco Chronicle
“His nonfiction is consistently driven by a sense that personal truths emerge from the wilderness–or at least from the imperfect quest to engage the wilderness on its own terms.”
Review: The Birds of Heaven, by Peter Matthiessen | San Francisco Chronicle
“Most stabs at meaning proceed casually from the mundane, a tactic which of course echoes Chekhov himself, who was a master of small moments illuminating big themes.”
Review: Reading Chekhov, by Janet Malcolm | San Francisco Chronicle
“A frustrating number of technical terms, such as sarcoplasmic reticulum, are invoked exactly once, for no particular purpose, as if the author simply likes the sound of them.”
Review: Stories of the Invisible, by Philip Ball | San Francisco Chronicle
“Nichols’ prose has a wonderful streamlined quality, a purpose-built economy of expression that doesn’t call attention to its own grace.”
Review: A Voyage for Madmen, by Peter Nichols | San Francisco Chronicle