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Was Jane Eyre Written as a Secret Love Letter?
In the summer of 1846 Charlotte Brontë faced two crises. Both she wished to keep secret. First: due to cataracts, her father was going blind. Why was this so calamitous? As a Church of England parish...
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Turning Away Refugees is an American Tradition
This was what it meant to live in the days that followed the war’s end, the days of placelessness, when more than 30 million people had been scattered across Europe and had lost their words for home....
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Claire Messud: What I Learned From My Mother’s Library
Each of us is made up of our lived experiences, of course; but also, both consciously and unconsciously, of all the stories that we have heard, read or watched. Without realizing it, we come to...
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Life on the Road, and in a Walmart Parking Lot
As I write this, they are scattered across the country– In Drayton, North Dakota, a former San Francisco cabdriver, 67, labors at the annual sugar beet harvest. He works from sunrise until after sunset...
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“Idiopathic Illness” a New Poem by Meghan O’Rourke
Idiopathic Illness I threw hollowed self at your robust, went for IV drips, mercury detoxes, cilantro smoothies. I pressed my lips to you, fed you kale, spooned down coconut oil. I fasted for blood...
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How Death Became Big Business in America
In America, death has been big business since the turn of the 20th century. A century has proven the perfect amount of time for its citizens to forget what funerals once were: family- and community-run...
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Why Does Literature Have So Little to Say About Illness?
I got sick so slowly it took a long time to realize I had a disease. I had returned from a book tour that to find that my limbs felt leaden, as if they were made of sand. I lay on the couch, trying to...
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Writing Middle-Aged Love
Pity the creative writing students starting the University of Arkansas MFA program in 1994. Pity them, for on the first day, two of the 12 fell in love. And the other ten had to read about it for the...
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8 Delusions of Western Democracy We Could Do Without
With our newsfeeds flooded with “fake news,” “post-truth,” and “alternative facts,” it seems harder than ever to know what’s real in politics, or to tell a realistic policy from a crowd-pleasing...
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How to Dig a Hole—and Other Pieces of 1,000-Year-Old Wisdom
While I can talk a good craft, I’m no craftsman. I’ve turned my hand to all sorts of things over the years, and at times of brimming self-confidence I like to consider myself a Renaissance man, but...
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The Political Power of Translation
When Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to refugees in August 2015, I happened to be spending the summer in Berlin. For days, I did little but watch the news and read about Syrian families and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Death Became Big Business in America
In America, death has been big business since the turn of the 20th century. A century has proven the perfect amount of time for its citizens to forget what funerals once were: family- and community-run...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why Does Literature Have So Little to Say About Illness?
I got sick so slowly it took a long time to realize I had a disease. I had returned from a book tour that to find that my limbs felt leaden, as if they were made of sand. I lay on the couch, trying to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Writing Middle-Aged Love
Pity the creative writing students starting the University of Arkansas MFA program in 1994. Pity them, for on the first day, two of the 12 fell in love. And the other ten had to read about it for the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
8 Delusions of Western Democracy We Could Do Without
With our newsfeeds flooded with “fake news,” “post-truth,” and “alternative facts,” it seems harder than ever to know what’s real in politics, or to tell a realistic policy from a crowd-pleasing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to Dig a Hole—and Other Pieces of 1,000-Year-Old Wisdom
While I can talk a good craft, I’m no craftsman. I’ve turned my hand to all sorts of things over the years, and at times of brimming self-confidence I like to consider myself a Renaissance man, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Political Power of Translation
When Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to refugees in August 2015, I happened to be spending the summer in Berlin. For days, I did little but watch the news and read about Syrian families and...
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