My Secret Career

When I was hired in 1996 to host an AOL website called Urban Legends I'd been online exactly twice in my life. Once in France on a very ...

There is a room in an old sea-weathered beach shack. It is a very large room, perhaps the size of a small barn. This shack could have been a...

This damn book sat on my shelf like an albatross for close to 10 years. I first tried to read it when I still lived in New York City. I next...

This is for Tim Taylor who will be outraged by the inclusion of anything written by this 'ferocious hack' on a Best Books list. I ca...

If I were to measure this list solely by sentimental markers this book would be at the top. Number one. Here's why. This book is an oral...

I picture Flannery O'Connor suspended over a wheat field, the night sky screaming away behind her, stars trying to get through the black...

To measure the greatness of this book, one must resort to a kind of magic, a faux-science akin to phrenology, handwriting analysis or divina...

I took an AP English class senior year. We read "Moby Dick". The real irony is that our teacher was a short drunk Scotsman named M...

Back on January 24, 2008, a full 20 months ago, I wrote a post about a song I hadn't heard in over 20 years. This weekend I heard the so...

In my junior year of college, I got a great job. The theater department had gotten a grant to create an acting troupe. Work study. Other dep...