The New Yorker: "Alone" by Yiyun Li

The New Yorker: "She's the One" by Tessa Hadley

The New Yorker: The Daughters of the Moon by Italo Calvino

I'm leaving!
I mean, I'm going outside on a lovely fall afternoon to rake some leaves. In past years I have let the wind blow the leaves, mostly from the huge sycamore in my front yard, down the hill, into the creek, to be washed down to the Shenandoah/Potomac/Chesapeake Bay/Atlantic Ocean. That has worked, mostly, except for the leaves that get stuck around the bushes at my front porch.However, this year I'm thinking about my vegetable garden. Leaves make fine compost, so I'm trying to maneuver the leaves inside the deer fence to cover the dead stalks (and wasted produce). The goal is the so-called lasagna garden, although I have some serious doubts. I'm supposed to cover the layer of leave

"You lie!"
No, this isn’t about Joe Wilson’s rude outburst during President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress. It’s about one of my many pet peeves (imagine that, a house full of peeves running around, crying for attention, making a mess everywhere) – the verb “to lie.”My students get this wrong all the time and they groan in frustration whenever I bring it up, because (a) they don’t get it, and (b) they don’t understand why it matters. Actually, lots of people don’t understand why it matters, but for writers I don’t understand how you could not aspire to write with precision. Precision means clarity, clarity means understanding, and anything is else is s

Status Update: Work in Progress
I've been working on my novel (all the livelong day . . .) and it's coming along. I'd say that it's coming along nicely, except I'm pretty sure it's too soon to judge. Today I'm working on the penultimate chapter and this weekend I expect to work on THE END. In both cases, I'm adding to drafts that are already complete, layering in some developments that I've been building throughout the current draft of the book.This doesn't mean that I'll be done this weekend, although I AM getting close. I've got to go back and strengthen some characters, etch in a few threads that I let get fuzzy in the middle of the novel, reinforce a trope or two, etc. I hope to get a lot of t

Giving Thanks
It's the day, after all, and here it is: Life is good. I am a very fortunate man. I worked very hard for years at a couple of jobs that I mostly loved, that took me to fascinating places and brought me in contact with equally fascinating people. As a result, I feel that I have much more to say now than I did when I was in my early 20s, at the time when I thought I might pursue a career in writing. I wasn't ready then, and so it's just as well that I realized I needed to pursue other interests.But now here I am. I'm able to spend most of my time writing, and because of that investment of time in my earlier years I find that I have no shortage of stories to tell. I'm a

NYT 100 Notable Books of 2009
Here's the list of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year.Surprises?I'm happy to see Brad Leithauser's new book, The Art Student's War, but I didn't know it was out yet. The review will appear on Nov. 27.There are a bunch of short story collections, including those by Wells Tower, Jean Thompson, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Aleksandr Hemon, John Updike, Kazuo Ishiguro, Antonya Nelson, Paul Yoon, Alice Munro, and Mary Gaitskill. That's a lot of stories!! (And, by the way, it's so great to see Paul Yoon on this list; congratulations,