Diary
Same boyfriend, different life.
We memoirists like to think our lives are uniquely ours, but often it turns out not to be true–at least not wholly true. I’ve been worrying these past
Do Nice Girls Have Sex?
Or how did nice girls have sex in the 1950s―you know, so twentieth century. In her controversial NYRB piece about two new Sylvia Plath biographies, the critic Terry
Is self-plagiarism really plagiarism?
I’ve just moved to London for the summer and one of the first things I did was attend the June meeting of “Laydeez do Comics,” a lively, successful
What’s in a name?
A few days ago I received an email from a high school friend I haven’t seen for many years. She said that on a recent trip to Paris
If Emily Dickinson tweeted…
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you―Nobody―Too? (c. 1861) Despite Dickinson’s well-known gift for concision, these lines and the ones that follow in the poem, suggest that Dickinson
Is Twenty-Seven Old?
At some point in the interesting new movie Frances Ha someone declares: “Twenty-seven is old.” In his enthusiastic review film critic A.O. Scott observes: “while that may in
The Compliment
When friends learn you are in treatment for cancer, naturally they prefer not to believe it. They want to cheer you up. “But you look great!” So how
Transitions
“It’s not the moves, it’s between the moves.” This was one of those offhand remarks that has stuck in my mind for at least twenty years. I remember
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.