Updated 2/24/2024

Yesterday at a used bookstore in New York, I got a Sixties paperback of Letters from the Earth, a collection of Mark Twain pieces that he...

Thinking three things about Robinson Crusoe today: 1. I had a children's version of this from Scholastic Book Club, a severe condensation...

Yesterday I realized a minor ambition of a few years' standing and read Harriet the Spy. I discovered I love this book and I love this...

The third installment in my pre-Halloween series: Robert M. Coates, parallel reality, and the ghost story without ghosts.

For Halloween month, I'm writing a weekly series focusing on a few of my favorite supernatural works. First up: the iterations and...

Thoughts on the successive and singular permutations (novel, film, sitcom) of a familiar and beloved comedic property.

At Critics at Large: my review of Michelle Dean's Sharp, concerning ten woman writers "who made an art of having an opinion."

At Critics at Large: My piece on the bilious, brilliant books of the Brown Buffalo, Oscar Zeta Acosta.

I’m thrilled that an excerpt from Magic Circles has found its way into another magnificent anthology of music writing. In Sound Bites:...

“Unless [the] would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love.” At...