Blue penises, brutality and boring sentences
If I had a feeling of deja-vu when I read other pieces about Bret Easton Ellis, who seemed to go through exactly the same routine with each interviewer, people (on…
Blog Archives
Changes at the LA Times
For the last five years, David Ulin has been books editor of the LA Times, but that’s going to change. Today he announced that he’ll become the paper’s new full-time…
Going to Utah
This Friday I’ll appear on a panel at the annual conference of the Association of American University Presses, at the gracious invitation of MIT Press. The panel is on Social…
The Bret Easton Ellis Meets the Press routine
In late May, I went to Bret Easton Ellis’ apartment to talk to him for a feature for the Los Angeles Times (it’s in Sunday’s paper). I’d arranged to be…
in Brooklyn
Today I walked down a sidewalk in Brooklyn as the last light left the sky. On one side of the road, a park, with people playing, you know, games with…
More on the iPad versus the Kindle
I’m on the podcast The Kindle Chronicles today talking about the iPad and the Kindle and no doubt alienating most of its listenership. Thanks to Len Edgerly for asking me;…
A new writing class
I’ll be teaching a new creative nonfiction class — memoir, essay — with Writing Workshops Los Angeles. It will start on June 1, and run for 8 weeks. It’s shaping…
Nothing happened: a review
Jake Silverstein, the editor of the award-winning Texas Monthly and a contributing editor at Harper’s, has published his first book, Nothing Happened and Then It Did. Opening with his early…
On the iPad
I wrote about the iPad for the LA Times, focusing on the reading experience and what it means. I compared it to Amazon’s Kindle; e-ink and light weight notwithstanding, Apple’s…
Talking to John Edgar Wideman
When I heard MacArthur Genius, National Book Award nominee John Edgar Wideman was doing a book with self-publisher Lulu, I was more than a little surprised. Then when I learned…
