Anecdotal Evidence

The new century -- no longer new -- has been insatiably consuming good writers. In the early years of the twenty-first we endured a rough pa...

Welcome news is so rare in our withered literary culture, we are obligated to celebrate good new work when we encounter it. The summer 2026 ...

The Night of the Murdered Poets took place on August 12, 1952. Thirteen literary and intellectual figures were murdered on Stalin’s orders i...

Yet another unfamiliar word I would like to see revived: gasconade . Dr. Johnson gives a typically terse definition : “a boast; a bravado.” ...

The only summer mornings we woke up and got dressed early was garbage collection day. We had to beat the trash men. This was long before rec...

“[T]here is, perhaps, a special pleasure in re-learning the names of many of the flowers every spring. It is like re-reading a book that one...

Literature is a hobby, and not. It is an academic discipline, and not. It is a diversion, a distraction, an escape. But some of us can’t ima...