One of my oldest friends, actor Joseph C. Phillips (mayor on CBS’s The District), who grew up black, hopeful, and liberal, but is now African-American, angry, and conservative, recently asked me how I felt about the latest Ward Connerly initiative. Connerly, the black University of California regent who convinced voters to make affirmative action verboten … Read more
I’ve stopped idealizing world travel. Sure, I’d love to believe that some day I’ll set foot on every continent. I’ve even overcome an odd, inherited prejudice against the Deep South, and started fantasizing about a road trip through the cornbread belt. Still, more and more, lately, I realize the place for me is my own … Read more
September 12, 2003, 1:37 p.m. Two days over deadline. Behind in not only this job, but all of the other part-time jobs that create this dubious, ever shifting “whole” of self-employment. OK, Colleen, get a grip. Don’t subdivide your anxiety; just concentrate on one thing at a time. 3:41 p.m. Staring at the screen for … Read more
I got it from my dad, this strange and incongruent entrepreneurial drive, this thirst to sell. It makes no sense for a quiet introvert like me, whose hands shake in front of groups and who cancels more social engagements than is appropriate in polite society, but it’s true nonetheless: I have a knack for sales. … Read more
You know, I’m sad because Ben got promoted. Now he works across town, at headquarters. He’s one of those buddies you develop out of necessity in the workplace. I suppose it’s some whacked-out version of the Stockholm syndrome. You love the one you’re with, right? But I have to admit that I’m a little relieved, … Read more
It’s not like we sit around holding our breath waiting for whatever’s next from the desk of David Foster Wallace, but we do take notice. In a way, we’re gratified that it appears to be dense work of nonfiction dedicated to hard science—that way we won’t feel guilty about keeping our nose to the grindstone … Read more
If the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons picked up a genie’s lamp with three wishes, he might turn himself into Richard Dawkins: Celebrity scientist, bestselling Oxford evolutionist and atheist, inventor of the concept of memes, close personal friend of author Douglas Adams and husband of an ex-Doctor Who actress. He is one highly evolved … Read more
Most of Jonathan Lethem’s early writing career consisted of science fiction novels that leaned toward the Philip K. Dick side of the genre—experimental, unorthodox and pounding on the door of literary respectability. When he finally got that door open, though, it was with a postmodern take on a different genre, Motherless Brooklyn, a detective noir … Read more
Now that Neal Pollack is past the indignity of being widely suspected to be Dave Eggers’s pseudonym, he’s been able to get down to the business of being his own pseudonym. As fans of his 2002 Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature and his consistently funny weblog know, in “Neal Pollack,” the real Pollack has … Read more
A very impressive first novel, Sebold’s The Lovely Bones deals with the grief, self-destruction, and eventual healing of a suburban family after daughter Susie is brutally raped and murdered. What saves the book from drowning in its grim premise is her deft choice of narrator—the murdered girl herself, who watches from the afterlife with sadness, … Read more