15 Aug 2011

One of the most common pieces of criticism regarding many novels is: the ending sucked.
It seems much easier to write a great beginning, to sustain the quality through the middle sections and then, suddenly, to flop the ending. In fact, reading the ending of any book is a strange experience, [...]

15 Aug 2011

Every year I pick up “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf, and every year I put it back down after about 10 pages. It’s become predictably hilarious.
“Mrs. Dalloway” is one of those classic books that the literati assumes we’ll not only love, but will change our lives. So by not loving [...]

10 Oct 2010

No one seems to have a very smiley vision of the future, or at least America’s future.
It’s kinda fun to predict irretrievable disaster, isn’t it?
The Fox-MSNBC news talking heads predict political melt down. The environmentalists are throwing up white flags and buying land in Canada. The artists are [...]

30 Sep 2010

Eleven days on a motorcycle — listening to the engine scream into the north country of Wyoming and Montana — will do funny things to your head.
There’s the stubborn shiver of steel below your body, vibrations squirming up your spine and jangling the lining of your brain. [...]

20 Sep 2010

LISTEN to an interview with John Vaillant:
(press the play button above)
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READ Jonathan Bastian’s review of ‘The Tiger’:
You have to imagine the location.
You are 6,000 miles to the east of Moscow, nearly a quarter-way around the world, but still technically in Russia. To the south is China. Japan is [...]

20 Sep 2010

Imagine an extremely fat Russian. He wears Adidas track suits and loves rap. He is very rich and in this 30s. His name is Misha Vainberg, and he’s the hero, in a way, of Gary Shteyngart’s novel “Absurdistan.”
Misha, who is exiled in St. Petersburg, spends his days dreaming [...]

1 Sep 2010

The colossal success of  “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer was a scarring slap in the face to us young aspiring novelists.
Foer was 25 years old when the book was published.
We put our pens down. We shut our laptops. We went for long walks, alone, in [...]