ThomasLitchford

Here’s a fun(ny) piece on young writers and writing workshops from Slate.com.
I’ve thought periodically about the value of writing workshops, and I keep coming to the conclusion that the workshops try to simplify what should be a difficult process. Writing good books should be hard. Getting published should be hard. Workshops, to me, seem like [...]

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Or, to put it another way, who’s the Big Deal Novelist of my generation? (These questions are not asking the same thing, necessarily, but they both get at something that’s been sticking in my craw, lately.)
An article in Time magazine asked the first question in July 2006. The position of the article is that the [...]

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This obituary is like a biography in miniature. Fischer was a fascinating character, whether you’re interested in chess, or not.
Interestingly, if you’ve read The Jewish Policemen’s Union The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, you might recognize some character traits and a certain style of play described by Chabon.
Bobby Fischer, Chess Master, Dies at 64 - New York [...]

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n+1 is a New York journal dealing in things literary, political, and intellectual (and probably in a lot more than that, too). I first heard about it in connection with Ben Kunkel, the author of a much doted upon coming of age novel, Indecision (the linked to review at Slate is slightly more measured than [...]

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I read an interesting essay by Mr. Wolfe yesterday, a manifesto of sorts: ‘Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast’.
And then I read an interesting response over at the Times.
Apparently the essay caused quite a stir in 1989.

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Danielle and Sean have dozed off on the couch. Puck (one of the cats) is asleep in the chair opposite me. (I don’t know where our other cat, Oberon, is, but he’s probably asleep, too.)
I can hear both Sean and Puck snoring.
There has been a lot of snoring going on around here, lately, or at [...]

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Sean Thomas Litchford is two weeks old today, and he’s doing great!
I had no concept of how tired I’d be with a newborn in the house. Everyone tells you you’re going to be tired, but, trust me, you have no concept of what that really means.

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