Wow.

Or to bastardize Voltaire: If this person didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Thanks to TFR reader Jason for sending this (as well as many other things) my way....

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Claiming J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

Let me get this little bit out of the way right now: Louis Menand of The New Yorker wrote the following about "The Catcher in the Rye" ten years ago and I don't think it's been said any better...

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Naked and the Conflicted

Perhaps an indulgent exercise considering the tragedy we're all reading about, BUT... for those of you interested in following a controversy that is raging around the literary establishment these days (whatever any of that means), a few weeks ago, Katie...

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Fugue State: Assert Your Dominance (Bears)

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American Avalon, a Tennessee paradise. The outskirts of the park, however, are a flailing, tacky Southern waiting room. There is a highway stretch filled with chapels, theme parks, chain restaurants. Dollywood spans...

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Summer 2009: Introduction to Fugue State

Dissociative Fugue Disorder: When a person is in a fugue state, he'll pick up and travel suddenly to some random point, not at all sure why he's doing it, and sometimes with little memory of who he is. This summer...

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A.E. Hotchner on Hemingway's "new" 'A Moveable Feast'

The account of how A Moveable Feast came into being from Hotchner's point-of-view is probably more interesting than the actual controversy itself....

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Starlight, PA

My first and last foray into writing for young adults. When I was sixteen years old, I boarded a bus from Newark Airport to reach a place I knew only as Starlight, PA. The name itself, Starlight, had magical...

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excerpt

While I'm teaching this summer and working on bigger projects, I'll do my best to keep you posted on little things. In the meantime, here's a bit of what I've been working on: I’ve come to stay here more and...

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Review: Desire Under the Elms

Despair has always been a currency with which the world of letters trades. This simply is. Despair is amorphous and timeless. Its depth is unmeasurable and its manifestations endless. As a new revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the...

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Sammiches

The day started sunny and we weren't looking for trouble, my friend and I went all the way uptown near where he used to live. It was the second nicest day of the year and there was traffic blocking...

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Some Wisdom

There is a beautiful moment in the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna. The general. The great general. He's standing in his chariot. And all the chariots are readied for war. And across the valley, he sees his opponents. And there he sees...

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Dear West Elm Marketing Corps

Dear West Elm Marketing Corps: As the Christmas (and, as I understand it, miscellaneous other) holiday hours are nearing, it disappoints me that I’ve yet to hear back from your office regarding the picture entitled “Urban Cocoa,” which I...

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New York Onanism: An Apology

Parts II & III of New York Onanism are forthcoming, I went into writer's block after being so pretentious....

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The Novel vs. The State

I telegraph mockingbird laughter back and ask him a last question. “How are you?” This is a question of paradox. It is the question of both an acolyte and an equalizer, something you'd ask an immortal mortal and his other, something that would be considered odd as part of any other valediction. “I’m well,” he says. “Thank you. I’m very well.”

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Review: Bon Iver, "For Emma, Forever Ago"

Sometimes, my friends interrupt my life to impose imperatives upon me. This has to be, in a lot ways, what friendship is about. The closest of them will demand (as I probably do too often of them) that I stop...

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Book Review: Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

Philip Roth has not yet left the building. We will note that Roth, growing more in his later years, has already taken pains to prepare us for the inevitable. His alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman has ushered us through the epic...

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The Liars' Club (Damn You Mary Karr)

Harmless Lies: My College Roommate or The Bar Stool Lie We are at (fill in one-word bar name) and, if I am lucky, I have exactly 45 seconds to make an impression on you (falsely appearing plaintive and momentarily neglected...

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Seasonal Syndrome

I woke up at 7:16 this morning, distressed by the sound of my radiator making its first rounds of the season. It was only white noise but it scared me out of a dream about something I'll never recall. I...

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Racist Warlocks and Sunflowers

Spoiler Alert: The end of this post contains the first two sentences of my forthcoming book about racist warlocks. Should you be a warlock purist, I strongly urge you not to read the last section of this post. I...

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Le Homme Bleu

A man doesn't have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn't have seasons enough to have a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes Was wrong about that. | Yehuda Amichai | My house here is covered in...

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Orsay Day

At the risk of offending someone's artistic sensibilities, I took pictures of some of my favorites at the Musee d'Orsay: (I've also put to use my amateur deconstruction and analysis skills to make the art banal for everyone else. Enjoy!)...

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The Montmartre Arcade Fire

Artistic/symbolic blurriness or low battery? You decide. I napped and "worked" until 10:30 on Saturday night, showered and made it to Montmartre at midnight. For those unfamiliar, Montmartre is on the far northern end of Paris (I think), on...

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A Mime, A Beret, and the Champs-Élysées

Trying to look as French as possible here. Champs Elysees: Part One One day when I'm traveling dishonestly, I will wake up early (or stay out all night) so that I can walk the Champs Elysees when it's empty...

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Croque Madame and Eiffel Power

Only the French (and Tony Parker) would place this backdrop for a basketball court. Inspired by the stories of French apostasy at the Jewish Museum of Art and History, I decided that I would break all the Shabbas laws...

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The First Twenty-Four (Hours)

I woke in a panic as I had missed free breakfast at the hotel and had overslept to counterbalance the difference between my intended and actual bedtimes. I was due uptown (which is a totally inaccurate but wholly-of-habit term) in...

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Behind All This...

He was formed half by the ethics of his father and half by the cruelties of war... -Foreword to a Yehuda Amichai anthology. #4 of Amichai's Seven Laments for the War-Dead 4 I came upon an old zoology textbook, Brehm,...

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An Awkward Disquisition on My Blackness

Craftsmanship has never been a strong suit of mine. I blame it on growing up left-handed and being told to write and engage in sports right-handed (and by extension, I am blaming Texas) as well as a motor skills...

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La Vie En Rose

...I do not speak much French and my exposure to Edith Piaf was initiated by the tribute that seemingly half of my favorite musicians pay to her work, but I went to this movie and it was a car crash on celluloid, a complete fucking disasterous mess, and perfectly emblematic of the life of the Sparrow...

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