Anecdotal Evidence

I have a typically human taste for taxonomy, classifying things, sorting them into categories. There’s comfort in order. A friend in Los Ang...

My middle son has a friend, a fellow Marine, who had questions about Russian literature. He asked about Andrei Platonov and Leonid Andreyev....

Most forgotten writers are deservedly forgotten, of course. Writing talent is unfairly distributed among literary aspirants. Sincerity and h...

“I am a nostalgist. More susceptible to the pull of the past than many of those around me, I am also aware of my condition, even somewhat as...

Certain writers lay claim to a piece of geography. Think of Cavafy’s Alexandria and William Kennedy’s Albany . Outsiders may visit but the d...

Several readers have quibbled with the late Oscar Mandel’s assertion that “literature exists to make men happy.” Oscar celebrates the “pleas...

“Poetry gives us a way of reading the world. Through its cadences, through its different ways of simultaneously conveying reason and feeling...