I happy to report that my upcoming story collection The Portable Son–about which I will increasingly make myself a nuisance–has recently received a starred review by Publishers Weekly. To read the review in its native web state, go here. But since it is so compact I’m just going to paste it all here: Peter Traxler [...]

I have been mulling over the news that Philip Roth no longer reads fiction. In a profile in the Financial Times, there is the following exchange: As we talk, Roth is perfectly courteous, perfectly charming, perfectly defended. Half a century of celebrity, since the publication of Portnoy’s Complaint in 1969 brought him money and a [...]

Here is Michael Chabon, substitute blogging for Ta-Nehisi Coates over at the Atlantic, blogging about blogging: Novelist time is reptile time; novelists tend to be ruminant and brooding, nursers of ancient grievances, second-guessers, Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks, retrospectators, endlessly, like slumping hitters, studying the film of their old whiffs. You find novelists going over and over [...]

Today in class, after somehow the discussion had wandered into my thoroughly complex dissatisfaction* with the acting of Leonardo DiCaprio, one student asked if there was any movie that I actually genuinely liked. At the time I drew a blank. My head became that little Mac spinning beach ball of death. But if I had [...]

Hello, hello, hello. I am pleased to report that my review of Sam Lipsyte’s newest novel The Ask is now online at the Quarterly Conversation. Please link right on over there and read it. However, if you are pressed for time now that we are in this Holiday Season, I offer you the abbreviated version [...]