In one of his classic comedy bits, George Carlin opines that the U.S. is a nation inherently obsessed with war to the degree that we have prescribed it as the cure for everything. We have declared, in the past 60 years, a war on drugs, a war on poverty, a war on cancer, and a war on terror, among others. All problems are seen as conflicts, a collective pitted against some threatening other. Often the other is conveniently difficult to identify or locate. Nevertheless there is a threat and the only response is to do battle with that threat. This ultimate fighting champion mindset seems, like cat hair, to cling to every metaphorical article of clothing in our walk-in closet.

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Remember what you’re here for, my professors repeated during my two years enrolled in the Rutgers-Newark MFA program. Do not permit teaching responsibilities to interfere with writing, they would say. Their words echoed in my adjunct office, bouncing back and forth between concrete walls (there were no windows; it looked like a glorious prison cell). I felt as if I was hiding a shameful secret when I nodded along to their sage words. But here it is in print now: I felt as passionately about teaching as I did about writing, and on many occasions (please don’t tell them), I did let teaching trump writing; I was still learning the program’s requirements and the students’ abilities (or lack thereof) as well as my own (or lack thereof works here, too). I felt I was there for both (like the true rebel that I am).

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A little less than twenty years ago, the “chick lit” genre was launched, arguably, with Helen Fielding’s 1996 Bridget Jones’s Diary. Next week, Fielding releases the third book in the Bridge Jones franchise, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. Looking back, its easy to claim that Bridget Jones was a phenomenon: the book spawned a […]

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The Brooklyn Book Festival filled downtown Brooklyn with the largest free literary event in New York City. In addition to the half dozen venues featuring readings, panels and author signings, Borough Hall Plaza was filled with vendors, presses, publishers, literary journals, and authors. The Main Stage of the book festival relied on the steps of […]

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A response and counter-list to their post “23 people who will make you care about poetry in 2013” Inspired by Patricia Lockwood’s poem “Rape Joke,” Jason Diamond produced for Flavorwire the list “23 People who will make you care about poetry in 2013,” a list of poets that he believes dispels the notion that “poetry […]

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The internet had generated so much buzz over Jami Attenberg’s newest novel, The Middlesteins, that when I suggested to a friend we should meet up there to hear her read, he scoffed that the place would be overrun and too crowded. But I still wanted to go, not just because of the internet chatter but […]

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I began reading Diaz’s new book only to think, “haven’t I read this already.” And then it occurred to me, that really, I’ve read this book twice already. His short story collection, Drown, is more or less a rough draft for the narrative of his critically acclaimed, award winning The Brief and Wondrous Life of […]

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I accidentally read The Perks of Being a Wallflower a week before the theatrical release last Friday. A friend had recommended it, somewhat out of thin air, and not wanting to disappoint, dutifully read it within a week. I knew quickly why he connected to the text as the young characters explore their homosexuality and […]

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