Goodbye to a Great Woman
A writer like Nadine Gordimer is rare. She was one of those great ones who challenged the human faculty for reading because her writing never conformed to the norms… More
Love Letter
“You’re a really good writer,” she said, “almost as good as your brother Charles. You should read the novel he’s writing.” So I snuck into Charles’s room and… More
PEN Remembers Vietnamese Poet Nguyen Chi Thien
PEN remembers poet Nguyen Chi Thien, who spent nearly three decades in prison in Vietnam and died on October 2, 2012. More
Grand Tour
In America I’m not really a private person. No, I’m a public person. And a public person cannot write. More
Things Come Together, Things Fall Apart
Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and… More
Sidney Offit: Memories of Norman Mailer
My memories of Norman Mailer drift back more than forty years to an evening we shared at one of the PEN cocktail parties. Held at the Pierre Hotel, these… More
Tribute to Norman Mailer
Unlike other literary figures, Mailer was not prone to elite sensibilities in his private or public life. He was not a pragmatist nor an opportunist, nor was he politically… More
Tribute to Norman Mailer
There was the true Norman and the public Norman. I really only knew the true Norman—thank God—because there was a huge difference between the two. More
Tribute to Norman Mailer
I scarcely knew him as a man, but I knew the work made by the man. Reading him when I was twelve—memorizing the obscene lyrics in The Naked and… More
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