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Studs Terkel: The More Things Change
PEN American Center 4: Fact/FictionThis talk was presented, in slightly different form, at a PEN Twentieth-Century Masters Tribute.Dorothy Allison reminds me of a woman I know in Chicago named… More
Language Barriers
I met Beckett in the mid ’60s. I’d started to read him in the mid ’50s and I wanted to meet the man. I didn’t often want to meet… More
One-Legged Walter
One-Legged WalterHe always made me wonder.Eyes crow-footed from sun,on snow.Body slumped,from slack times.He lived in Sullivan’s junk-yard,in a gutted ’51 Chevy.On the floorboard,tattered blankets, neatly sewn together,made his bed.Sunkist… More
Portable Cultures, Global Identities: Panel Discussion
I knew my friends were right: in school I had learned about my ancestors’ bravery, about how they fought the slave trade successfully. But I hated this history. I… More
Proust Regained
And now a translation of the opening passage composed for this occasion. Those of you who have tried to translate the first sentence will know that it is impossible.… More
The Play’s the Thing: A Discussion
BEGINNINGSCHARLES MEE: I had polio when I was a kid, and up until I was fifteen I had never read anything but comic books. Then a high school English… More
The Real Story: Literary Fact and Fiction
CHARLES MCGRATH: It seems fair to say that we’re living in an age of porosity; the traditional boundaries between fact and fiction have become permeable, with factual narratives borrowing techniques… More
James Baldwin’s Grand Tour
In America I’m not really a private person. No, I’m a public person. And a public person cannot write. Writers always have to find a way to do their… More
1,001 Laughs
1,001 LaughsBack in the thirties, Borges worked for an Argentinean womens’ magazine called El Hogar—a magazine of middle-class attitudes and presumptions, roughly similar to Redbook in America today. I… More
Language of Labyrinth
A young aspiring writer, I discovered the work of Borges at about the same time that I began to read Beckett. Neither of these writers indicated directions I believed… More
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