I've given birth to two children by scheduled Cesarean section, so I never had to spend a moment in actual labor. Is it true that many women forget the painful hours they spent in natural childbirth? I read somewhere that nature created some mechanism in us by which women do, indeed, forget so that we'll be willing to have more than one child. If it's true, I think I could compare the writing of Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts to a kind of natural childbirth. Sometimes I look at that tidy book with its dark, evocative cover and wonder just how in the heck it got here.  Continue reading...

Last week we interviewed the irrepressible Roy Blount, Jr. about his latest book, Alphabet Juice, an A-to-Z compendium of his musings on the glory of the English language. In this excerpt from the book's opening chapter, Blount considers the scholarly theory of the arbitrary relation between words and meanings, to which he firmly responds: "Arbitrary, schmarbitrary."  Continue reading...

Hey, have you guys heard about this crazy new thing lots of teachers are doing? It's a little nuts, so you may want to sit down. I was floored myself when I heard, but lots of language arts teachers are using recently-written literature in their classrooms! Like, literature not written by Hawthorne, Williams or Dickinson. Nuts!  Continue reading...

The late John Updike was a virtuoso of both fiction and non-fiction forms. Here is a sampling of his best work.

Rabbit Novels Vol. 1

Rabbit Novels Vol. 2

Due Considerations

Hugging the Shore

I feel like I ought to begin this column with some kind of public service announcement. Maybe a shaky close-up of the cover of the script of Death of a Salesman (preferably the one of Dustin Hoffman in old-age makeup), followed by a slow pan out as we hear Morgan Freeman's voice saying, "Teachers of America, before you teach Arthur Miller's classic, you should know... your students will not understand this play. If you have any choice in the matter — any choice at all — you should choose The Crucible."  Continue reading...

Feast your eyes on these books showcasing the beautiful tradition of manuscript illumination.

Masterpieces of Illumination

Marvellous to Behold

A History of Illuminated Manuscript

Bibles and Bestiaries