Doubt the Experts

I've begun to read The Spectacle of Skill: Selected Writings of Robert Hughes . Hughes lived from 1938 to 2012, and these essays cover a...

Not to boast, I have two characteristics that give me advantages over some others: self-awareness and self-discipline. Addictions are not a ...

I'll summarize the final third of the novel and then make some comments. Against the advice of Robert, Henri publishes an article in L...

The novel continues to recount actual historical events. While on an idyllic bicycle holiday in the French countryside, Paula, Robert and He...

I hope I don't end up boring you by spending too much time on a book that you probably haven't read, but I prefer to proceed slowly....

I thought I should provide an example of the writing that I appreciate in this novel. Anne, who is a psychotherapist, is invited to a gather...

I'm a third of the way through the novel and will probably have comments to make all the way up to the end. The politics, unsurprisingly...

Despite the continued presence of houseguests, I've managed to make a small dent in the novel. So far I'm enjoying it a lot and it c...

I don't have much to report because I'm distracted by the arrival of visitors who disrupt my thoughts by their mere presence and str...

For some reason I received an e-mail from Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor at the New Yorker , recruiting me to assist in a new process for w...

I decided to add a new kind of entry, which I'll call "Diary," in order to allow myself to write about anything without naming...

I've finished reading the book and have gradually become more disappointed in it for reasons that I'll explain later. Even so, Sherr...

In case you were wondering, I haven't had a stroke or died. I started reading Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Ag...

One of the reasons why I chose to retire to Middlebury was that it has some similarities to the town where I attended college, namely, Green...

As promised, I read Bad Behavior , by Mary Gaitskill. It consists of nine short stories, many of which deal with dark behaviors that don...

Though I don't particularly like to comment on current events, it seems appropriate to say something about the terrorist attacks in Pari...

You may have noticed how my attitude has changed toward the Internet over the course of writing this blog. For a number of reasons I am reve...

Among the people whom I know best, one of their greatest concerns is that they don't feel that they belong to any particular group. I th...

Click  here  for Henri 2, Paw de Deux

Though I no longer make a habit of reading book reviews of popular fiction after years of finding them unsatisfactory, I looked at Michiko K...