I facilitate a writing group that’s a delightful mix of fiction writers, memoirists, poets, and nonfiction writers. I suppose you could say that some members of the group are creative writers, and some aren’t. Because I rarely attempt to write fiction, I had some anxiety about facilitating a group like this one. Did I have [...]
Nathaniel West’s cynical novel about Hollywood, The Day of the Locust, was published 72 years ago today. West said that he wanted to rouse sympathy for the people whose dreams were mocked and exploited by the movie industry – in fact his first title for the novel was The Cheated. But when he sat down at the [...]
Any time you talk or think deeply about an issue, you have an opportunity to rethink your beliefs and opinions.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua needed some careful editing.
I don’t recall ever hearing the phrase “blood libel” before yesterday. When I looked it up on Wikipedia, I was surprised to find a lengthy historical entry there. If the term, which refers to scurrilous attacks against Jews, is new to me, chances are Sarah Palin didn’t know about it either. (Yesterday she used it [...]
The debate about the offensive “n” word in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn shines a light on some important postmodernism issues.
Give your readers enough information to make the reading process smooth and easy.
Thanks to Sarah Palin, a new word has entered the language: “Refudiate.” It showed up in a tweet that Palin sent out on Sunday: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.” When people started talking about “refudiate,” Palin deleted her tweet [...]
