Anecdotal Evidence

We all do it, even the most sophisticated and open-minded among us: we draw conclusions about people based on their physical appearance. Sur...

A reader in North Dakota tells me he has acquired Donald Frame’s translation of The Complete Essays of Montaigne (Stanford University Press...

I was seated in the waiting room of the physical therapy center with the rest of the human wreckage. Two men were seated to my right, speaki...

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...