“My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.”

Who would you like to begin your summer with?  This year, I choose Henry David Thoreau. His essay “Walking” celebrates the art of meandering, sauntering and getting lost in fields and woods. He is drawn to the forest, the meadow and “the night in which the corn grows.” He … Read More

“But what could possibly go wrong?”

Think of the funniest books you’ve ever read.  Did any of them win literary awards?  No?  As the Washington Post points out, there has long been a “critical resistance to comic novels.” Until now. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to the laugh-out-loud novel Less by Andrew Sean GreerRead More

“I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak – to be company.”

The school year is drawing to a close now, and so for me it’s time to revisit my goals and consider the extent to which we met them.  On the top of my list is the wish that students will see literature not as documents but as “company” that speaks Read More

“I want to be alone, but not too alone.”

I disagree with the description on the back of this book, which says that one of Jonathan Franzen’s “essential themes” is “the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America.” Rather, it seems to me that in every one of these essays, the narrator discovers that he’s not alone … Read More