Denis Johnson died last year - the third of my three favourite American fiction writers to fall, after David Foster Wallace and Thom Jones. I always described Johnson as "the best American fiction writer you've never heard of" - though that stopped being quite so true after he won the National Book Award in 2007. Now he's left us a last gift, a posthumous, second, and final collection of short fiction. Even in death, he can still write sentences like this one. And I'm not sure anyone else can - or ever will.... (read more)
Author (and high school janitor, and Iowa Writer's Workshop graduate and teacher) Thom Jones has died. He was the best writer of short fiction in the entire history of the world. You have never heard of him.... (read more)
It occurs to me today that perhaps the proper antidote to the Existenial Outlook is to regard life instead as an opportunity.... (read more)
Since the periodicity of my long-running quotations series has been getting asymptotic with infinity, here are the quotes that have been piling up since the last edition... (read more)
An amateur novelist doesn't think he's done until his book is under a cover and piled on display tables across the land. Why do these people think this is likely to happen? Moreover, why do they imagine that it will be a rapturous, fulfilling, life-changing event if it does?... (read more)
Today is the official U.S. publication date of The Manuscript. It's also the day I finally knocked up a web site for Pandora's Sisters. Have a look.... (read more)
