I used to sit next to my stepfather in his office doing my homework, answering the phone and occasionally making a call for him. I looked forward to this afternoon ritual at 215 East 19th Street in Manhattan.
It was our daily moment of companionability. He would use his big sterling silver fountain pen to [...]
I think—you were waiting breathlessly for what I think, right?—I think Americans need to change our job description. I mean, we didn’t exactly clamor to be alpha consumerists, did we? It was sort of foisted on us by people who had a lot to sell. They promised us that if we bought all they had [...]
Read More...More than 50 years ago I’d whip my apron off at the cigar store and dash around the corner to bring Mr. Berman his daily egg cream soda and five-dollar Cuban cigar. It was usually 6:30 p.m., just before I was beseiged with newspaper buyers. Mr. Berman sat all day long in a wheelchair in [...]
Read More...When I was a book review editor for The Winston-Salem (NC) Journal & Sentinel back in the late 1960s I occasionally got a review that showed telltale signs of having been cobbled together from the book jacket and publisher’s press kit. I don’t remember reporters ever doing that, but a few academics did. It was [...]
Read More...Once in a while I invent someone whom I wouldn’t want any known actor to play. Day after day I search the shelves of my mind for just the right actor, but they’re all wrong. I think the only thing to celebrate about this is a momentary triumph over stereotype.
On the other hand, some of [...]
Some people live their lives so vividly you can’t imagine a world without them. I’m not talking about faces—there are faces like that—I’m talking about people whose responses to challenges are written so large in our minds that we can’t even imagine our own lives without them.
Dominick John Guccione (you can see him working in [...]
I think a lot about how writers write. Some bounce on the trampoline. Some like the company of Jack Daniels or the St. Pauli Girl. Some write all night and sleep all day. Some stand, some drape themselves around. I stuff notepads in my pockets and walk around, stopping under awnings and lampposts. Then I [...]
Read More...The publication of Saraceno and responses to it have prompted me to think a great deal about the nature of crime. I spent most of my life thinking I knew what crime is. Now I wonder. I hear, we all hear, a lot from the pulpit and the rostrum about abortion, stem cell research, right [...]
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