I’m not so arrogant as to believe that I’ve got something profoundly novel to contribute to the vast ongoing discussion about the most important writer in the history of the English language. I can only do what the title of … Continue reading My Writers: William Shakespeare
I operate under the belief that I saw the very first Calvin and Hobbes comic strip when it appeared in the newspaper. I have a vague memory of being in one of my high school classrooms, a social studies course where the teacher had the daily newspapers and a bevy of weekly current affairs magazines delivered and on display, actively encouraging us to peruse them while others were completing assignments. (He also regularly made us watch C-SPAN, which is a sort of torture for adrenaline-fueled, hormone-addled teenagers, as well as forced us to sit through entire Mark Russell comedy specials, … Continue reading My Writers: Bill Watterson
I was in a creative writing class in college when one of my fellow students asked the professor if it was acceptable for him to write his stories about sports. When the professor was reluctant to agree, my classmate added that his desire was to write a series of loosely interconnected stories about baseball. As I recall it, the professor settled immediately in the affirmative given the additional information. Baseball, he said, was the one sport that actually merited literary attention. If I weren’t already inclined in that direction, I’d have to accede the point every time I read one … Continue reading My Writers: Roger Angell
Sometimes I don’t feel worthy as a reader, as if I haven’t earned the right to turn the pages. That’s admittedly entirely at odds with the impact that any writer would ever hope to have, making me feel guilty for even expressing it. Certainly, John Updike, a deeply devoted reader who contributed effusive, informed book reviews to The New Yorker for years, would probably be dismayed by me–by anyone–applying that sentiment to his work. And yet that’s exactly how I felt. It’s not that the language was too dense or flowery, curlicues of off-putting eloquence. Instead, it was the clean, … Continue reading My Writers: John Updike
I owned two copies of Cruel Shoes when I was nine years old. It was the late nineteen-seventies and Steve Martin was approaching the peak of his significant, practically unprecedented stardom as a stand-up comic. Absolutely everyone within my pint-sized … Continue reading My Writers: Steve Martin
When I first saw Simon Callow’s biography on Orson Welles on the Borders new releases shelf, I was skeptical about my need to read it. At the time, I’d recently completed Frank Brady’s Citizen Welles. While I have a deep, … Continue reading My Writers: Simon Callow
When I was a kid, I had a strong affection for Chicago, despite the small detail that I’d never actually been there. My fondness for the City of Big Shoulders probably had its origins in my devoted viewing of channel … Continue reading My Writers: Mike Royko
I have a dear friend who prefers her fiction sad. That’s my interpretation, anyway. She might say she simply prefers it to be truthful or poignant or even ruefully funny. All of those are true too, I suppose, but I … Continue reading My Writers: Nicole Krauss
Not to get overly mired in the process that led to this recurring feature, but I’ll note that when I made my original list of ten writers that had special meaning to me–prompted by a Facebook meme–Jonathan Franzen was one … Continue reading My Writers: Jonathan Franzen
It seems wrong to structure this as obit, somehow. No one who writes words like that really ends, do they? Elmore Leonard writes–wrote, it’s wrote–with such a pungent, fierce, sly, inspiring, dizzying command of the language, mostly because he understood … Continue reading My Writers: Elmore Leonard
Coffee for Two 