One occupational hazard of writing is finding yourself frequently susceptible to strange obsessions. You might argue writers depend upon them. One of my latest is fungi and mushrooms, and I freely …
Last week I had one of those book-shopping experiences that are becoming rarer by the day: I walked into a bookstore; I asked the bookseller for help finding a title; the bookseller led me to the …
In an address to the 2012 Whiting Award winners, later republished in The New Yorker , Jeffrey Eugenides takes as his theme a piece of advice Nadine Gordimer once offered Christopher Hitchens: "A …
Ah, the dreaded occasional poem: feared by high-school bards, bane of poets laureate worldwide, secretly abhorred by all writers with patrons for a very, very, very long time. Graduations, …
As hackneyed and clichéd as it is, I cannot bear the fact that time passes. I'm always talking about it. I obsess over it, and my friends find it incredibly annoying. But you have to understand that …
Across the street from my apartment, men are building a house. Over the past month or so, I've observed through my living room windows one mysterious construction process after another. A steamroller …
No, this is not some lurid account of the time I recapitulated someone else's work in such a thorough fashion that I deluded even myself as to my role in its authorship. (If you would like to read …
"We wish you a Happy Crimble, and a very new year," John Lennon says solemnly at the end of some Beatles interview or another. I don't remember anything else about that recording, except I listened …
How many times are we going to be promised an apocalypse? How many times are we going to be disappointed? Will I see Mayan death-gods descend from the sky in my lifetime? Are God and Satan ever going …
Given the ways in which Christmas has colonized nearly every other aspect of life in the western world during the last six weeks of the year, one would think the world of literature would be no …
Do you know the landscape of your writing? If you painted your writing style, put acrylic to canvas, what would the image show? Nearly half a century ago, an English professor at Rice University …
Dear Editor's Blog Readers, Most of us here at Gulf Coast and the University of Houston are gripped in the throes of a collapsing semester, its deadlines and crunch-time. We're writing papers, …
A few weeks ago, an internet meme made the rounds that sparked a little too close to my woodshed: I can relate. Most people I know can relate. Why , I wonder. Why should we cry when we're only …
"Sometimes, you have to get up really high to understand how small you are. I'm going home now." With these words, on October 14, 2012, Felix Baumgartner stepped off the dock of his helium balloon …
When I was a kid, I used to watch the country-themed TV show, Hee Haw , with my father on Saturday nights. Hee Haw aired (in local syndication) for over 25 years. If you've never heard of Hee Haw …
This is a performance. Privilege the performance first, the work you've written second. Or, privilege the work you've written through the performance you'll be giving. Before you get there, up there, …
The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet. --Baron Cuvier Whenever I find myself staring down my laptop, unkempt on the couch so the cats try to groom me; whenever it's late November and …
Sometimes I'm sitting here, trying to write more and more pages of a novel, and I feel despair and loneliness, and I think about seeing if anyone's tweeted anything funny lately ( @mat_johnson …
A few years back, after nine months of living in Houston, I started listening to heavy metal music. When I was a teenager in the '90s I was familiar with popular heavy metal bands like White Zombie …
• Last will V. S. Let's agree to this: when I die, you will put a cross on my grave. Let it be like all other crosses, but we, my friend, we will know, it is--just a signature. As on paper the …