Read my latest in Splice Today: https://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/jonathan-franzen-can-t-solve-climate-change-for-anyone-who-matters
Solving climate change one slick magazine at a time.
Read my latest on Splice Today . . .
Read it here: https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/attacked-on-the-street
Tiredness, Truth, and Mockery: the American Way
Today, I wonder whether I should re-think some of my ultra-liberal biases and attendant leftist news consumption. This is good. But, man, I'm beat. The alt-right (and the radical religious right) to me seems like a uniquely American expression of deep stupidity but, of course, I would say that. Look at my demographic: college educated,... Continue Reading →
The Professional and the Superior Man
A long time ago, I watched a black-and-white movie about the French Foreign Legion in Algeria. The title escapes me, as does most of the plot, but I vividly remember one scene. A young recruit had snuck off to a local village to visit a girl he liked and was arrested for deserting his post.... Continue Reading →
The Voice in the Fire
As I have said many times and in many different ways, graduate study in literature and creative writing is not easy for anyone, even in the most favorable circumstances. There is an inner, emotional, psychological, processual effort that no one talks about and an outer, technical, rhetorical, production effort that everyone takes for granted. Both... Continue Reading →
Blame the Drugs
Today, there was flooding in London. I was supposed to be there. But because I have no cartilage in my knees, I often wake up in agony on barometrically improvident days. Dark days of lying on the bed, focusing on my breathing. Days in which it's hard to think, much less write. Days of codeine... Continue Reading →
Bangkok Power and Light
There comes a time in everyone's life when a tactical regression is in order. Not the screaming hand-waving hysterics of those soon-to-be dinner for someone with sharper fangs, but a gentleman's dignified reverse into the security of the kind and the known. Still, you can do nothing without electricity, especially if you live with me... Continue Reading →
Heartbreak Hotel in Three Slow Verses
Some time has passed since I've encountered a post-graduate heartbreak narrative as deadening as that of Jonathan Gottschall in “Survival of the Fittest in the English Department.” Maybe this is because I've abstained from reading The Chronicle of Higher Education, concluding (rightly, I still think) that it lives on a kind of niche-demographic sensationalism meant... Continue Reading →
Bangkok Prolegomenon: the First Six Months
Moving to Bangkok has been very formative thus far. Among other things, this city has challenged me to enter states of discomfort linguistically, energetically, intestinally, sometimes interpersonally. But this has not been a bad thing. I think it has been the kind of discomfort necessary for growth. As I approach six months in Thailand, I... Continue Reading →
England: First Thoughts
Being in England is an education in many ways. I have lived abroad for various lengths of time and each experience provided a useful degree of contrast, but my experience in the UK thus far has been unique--cultural consonance and dissonance reapportioned in new and unforeseeable dimensions. There is something simultaneously impressive and inscrutable about... Continue Reading →
The Writing Expedition 