I made this poster for our exciting Spring 2010 Reading Series. Click on the image to enlarge… 
February 4, 2010
Poster for Lewis and Clark Reading Series
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January 24, 2010
I love Concrete Blonde’s, “Joey.” I can’t stop listening to it. It’s like candy. The live version, especially.
January 21, 2010
In J.C. Hallman’s fabulous book: “The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature.”
“The Overcoat, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Metamorphosis: All three are commonly called fantasies. From my point of view, any outstanding work of art is a fantasy insofar as it reflects the unique world of the individual.”
January 15, 2010
Surfacing
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A new semester brings me to the surface of this site, where I consider some of the things that matter to my life, such as it is. As you might expect I’m a huge Martha Coakley supporter, going into Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts — an election where, as always, there’s a lot at stake. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just win an election like 2008’s Presidential landslide — and then relax for a while.
The semester also makes me think about the thing I love to do: Talk about books. Why do I love to do this? Because I think that the experience of reading is removed from time, from linear time, and provides us with a nearly-boundless sense of depth and imaginative living. That’s why. Also: Books, not bombs. It’s an ideological thing.
I’m still working on the novel, the novel that’s set, at least in part, in Cairo. It looks good, so far, and I can do nothing but keep progressing! Here’s a photo of downtown Cairo and the Nile.
December 3, 2009
It’s always nice to get to the office *before* sunrise and leave *after* sunset.
Ha.
November 9, 2009
November 9, 2009
I was driving to work and listening to World Have Your Say on the BBC, and it suddenly occured to me: My book is primarily centered around the fall of the Berlin Wall. And today is the 20th anniversary of that fall. And my book just came out in German, in March. And I haven’t said anything about it on my website. Nothing!
And so I wonder: Why are authors such terrible promoters, by and large?
Bad, bad Pauls.
Thanks to Amy Lemmon (whose book of poems, Saint Nobody, is wonderful, and just came out this year from Red Hen Press) for reminding me, as well. Why not post my cover? Why not link to the amazon.de page for the book — which has a nifty trailer? Why not, indeed?
Coming soon: A short bit about a book by the journalist Tom Krattenmaker…
November 5, 2009
You can read it, here!
I didn’t know what was in it! Then I read it. Here’s the link. Scroll down a bit to reach the .pdf. It’s only 42 pages to understand it! I printed it out and read it over lunch. It was actually kind of exciting.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/05/health.care/
November 4, 2009
Sad News, Today: Claude Levi-Strauss Has Passed Away
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/europe/04levistrauss.html
Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist whose revolutionary studies of what was once called “primitive man” transformed Western understanding of the nature of culture, custom and civilization, has died at 100.
His son Laurent said Mr. Lévi-Strauss died of cardiac arrest Friday at his home in Paris. His death was announced Tuesday, the same day he was buried in the village of Lignerolles, in the Côte-d’Or region southeast of Paris, where he had a country home…
October 28, 2009
There are three books I want to read — badly enough that it’s making me worry about the fact that I don’t have any time to read them! But this is not a bad thing, in some ways. It just clarifies my reading list for the Winter Holidays.
Here they are. Perhaps talking about them will ease my distress over not reading them:
Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer
Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon
The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk
The first two titles have particular resonance for me, personally. And the last: Well, I heard an interview with Pamuk saying that he was actually building the museum from his novel, this year, in Istanbul. If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.
I am reading a little bit right now: The Night Counter, by Alia Yunis.
This is a great novel!
More soon…
