I started publishing my memoir here on Litkicks 15 years ago. I wrote one new chapter a week for 53 weeks, covering the years 1993 to 2003 when I was a first-generation website developer participating in an amazing worldwide software revolution from inside the skyscrapers of Manhattan and my home … Read the rest
A favorite novelist of mine, Sam Savage, is entering hospice. According to the Numero Cinq article revealing the sad news of his medical condition, he has suffered for decades with a blood disease called “alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency”. It never harmed his ability to write.
Savage was born in 1940 … Read the rest
Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee’s long-unseen companion novel to To Kill A Mockingbird, is arriving with a shock.
Where Lee’s classic novel presents Atticus Finch as a lawyer who fights heroically for an African-American who is unjustly accused, the continuation of the story (written decades ago, but … Read the rest
When I’m feeling stressed out, I head for nature. I found myself driving to Old Rag Mountain in Virginia’s Shenandoah range this weekend.
I’ve done a few amazing hikes in this region: Mary’s Rock, Catoctin, Hawksbill, Big Schloss, sometimes with others and sometimes alone. The challenging eight-mile Old Rag hike … Read the rest
On the morning of April 9, 1865, one hundred and fifty years ago, the main Confederate army attempted a last desperate escape from its encirclement southwest of Richmond, Virginia. The attempt was over by the break of dawn, and General Robert E. Lee sent a letter to General Ulysses S. … Read the rest
What can a pacifist say about racism? A lot, it turns out. The pacifist perspective is badly needed when rage abounds, as it does right now following the decisions by grand juries in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City not to indict two policemen who killed two unarmed African-American men.… Read the rest
A strange kind of anxiety can occur when attending a concert by an artist like Bob Dylan. I was struck by a sense of this anxiety as I stepped into Constitution Hall in Washington DC last night. I began to worry that it would impact my enjoyment of the show.… Read the rest
I used to read short stories all the time. At one point, I was more into short stories than novels.
Well, why not? This was back when Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Tama Janowitz, Lorrie Moore, John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Alice Munro and William Trevor were all putting out stuff … Read the rest
If you only know the (great) movie version of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With The Wind, you might think Atlanta was burned in a day. But a city as big as Atlanta can’t be burned down that easily. It took General Sherman’s army nearly three months, from September 1864 … Read the rest
