Noted
Between Procrastination and Productivity
The semester is almost over. Next week is my last class. Soon, my academic calendar will clear and…And what? Which of the many pieces of
May 11, 2014
Noted
Looking Jewish
I’ve just returned from a lecture trip to South Carolina. Among other things, I gave a talk called “My Memoirs Made Me Jewish,” a paradox
May 1, 2014
Noted
Regarding Susan Sontag
Saturday night I watched the showing of Nancy Kates’s marvelous documentary about Susan Sontag at the Tribeca Film Festival. I was lucky enough to belong
April 24, 2014
Paris Memoir
I’M ALL EARS
As a New Yorker born and bred, I feel entitled to kvetch, and I may have never kvetched more than in dealing with the fate
April 10, 2014
Noted
My Memoirs Made Me Jewish
In the year 2000 I received a phone call from a real estate broker who informed me that I had inherited a small plot of
April 3, 2014
Noted
Resentful, moi?
Is it just me? Why do certain epithets remain attached to the term feminist, no matter how erroneous or out of date? Bra-burning, man-hating, angry,
March 27, 2014
Noted
Promoting Someone Else’s Self
Ann Beattie, a well-known writer and a vice president for literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, has a problem: she’s tired of
March 20, 2014
Noted
Lemurs and Leaders: The Cooperation Thing…
I recently came across the obituary of Alison Jolly, a primatologist who studied lemurs and wrote definitive studies of this species. I might not have
March 13, 2014
Friendship
When a Friend You Love is Ill
Right now, I am at my desk preparing my seminar for tomorrow, but my thoughts keep straying from Holocaust testimony―this week’s subject, as it happens―to
March 6, 2014
Noted
Bad Boys, encore?
You have to wonder what kind of anxiety about masculinity drives the editors at the New York Times. Last week it was “bullish on boyish-boys,”
February 27, 2014
Welcome. Some musings on my current preoccupations with the worlds of illness and the worlds of books, the vicissitudes of living with cancer and the need now, in my eighties, to imagine what new writing might be.