This is the text of a paper I presented at the Modernist Studies Association annual conference, which this year took place in Brooklyn, New York, not far from where James Purdy lived for many years. Since I don’t have plans to develop this particular presentation beyond what it was, I […]
I felt guilty packing a bunch of gay male novels and story collections from the 1980s and early 1990s into a couple boxes and putting them in the attic, but I need shelf space for books I regularly read. Once upon a time, I dreamed of writing a book about […]
In 2018, I wrote a post at The Mumpsimus about Raymond Carver, inspired by Brian Evenson’s little book about Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Soon after I published it, Google decided the post was plagiarized clickbait and removed it. I could never figure out what […]
“The good thing about the novel is that it can really be anything.”—Robert Glück, Paris Review interview (Art of Fiction no. 260), Fall 2023 Novels are vexing. Reading them, writing them, thinking about them. Vexing! I write this having read another novel that had lots of elements I enjoyed and […]
I’m going to write a bit here first about a book you are unlikely to read. This of course poses a problem for you as a reader: why bother reading about a book that will have likely no place in your life? That question, though, is one that lurks beneath […]
Since the title of my recent book is The Last Vanishing Man (and the title story includes historically-accurate descriptions of stage illusions), it shouldn’t be a surprise that I love everything having to do with magic — the lore, the history, the illusions, the beliefs in some sort of “real” […]
Today, I gathered with friends, colleagues, acquaintances, former students, former teachers, and former staff members at the New Hampton School, the high school I graduated from in 1994 and then returned to for my first job after college, a job I planned to stay at for a year or two […]
In The New Yorker, there is a long and depressing article titled “The End of the English Major” by Nathan Heller, an article that explores the fast decline in enrollment in English majors and classes at schools throughout the United States. It’s well researched, and doesn’t entirely fall into the […]
The ChatGPT handwringing of late has bothered me, not least because it is cloaked in a kind of shock, like the domain of higher education has suddenly been sullied by this profane technology. But babes, it was always already here. —Brenna Clarke Gray I tried to ask ChatGPT to write […]
“We’re in a bad time for everybody. There are very few models as to our way to be drawn upon in any community. There certainly are no states that one could look to and say, ‘A revolution has occurred here; they’re acting better toward people.’ And the religious are going […]
1. Take a moment, settle yourself, and note your immediate emotional response to these words: kindnessjoycontemplationgenerositylovepeace Now think about them in the context of your work. Would your work be better if there were more of these things? Do you feel that they are relevant to what you do every […]
At this year’s MLA Convention, I am honored to be on a panel devoted to “Woolf’s 21st Century Academia”, a panel sponsored by the International Virginia Woolf Society. My presentation, “Poor Queer Studies for a Society of Outsiders” positions Woolf’s Three Guineas alongside Matt Brim’s Poor Queer Studies. However, once […]