Apparently some copy editors have taken issue with Pico Iyer’s use of long sentences. In today’s Los Angeles Times, he makes an eloquent case for them (while employing them often), explaining that he uses them “as a small protest against — and attempt to rescue any readers I might have from — the bombardment of [...]

The fog rolled in this afternoon and I went for a walk. The sky was drained of color, the world reduced to black and greys. I looked up and saw this.

The world lost a great writer recently, and I lost a good friend. Joel Deutsch — poet, essayist, novelist — died in Los Angeles. Joel devoted his life to learning and writing. Thanks to a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts, he edited and published a highly regarded journal, Meatball. Later, he wrote [...]

Love the spare sound of this. Rivers of Gold by Idée Fixe Records

This week I interviewed Henry Rollins — punk rock icon, spoken-word performer, writer, actor, DJ — about his new book, Occupants, which features his photographs and observations from war-torn and troubled places around the world. It’s a powerful book. I loved what Henry had to say about travel and the kindness of strangers and how [...]

Ernest Hemingway bought his beloved boat, Pilar, in a shipyard in Brooklyn in 1934. Could the ensuing time he spent on the boat have altered his writing style? At least one writer thinks so. Paul Hendrickson is the author of the new book, Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961. (Given all [...]

Really enjoying David Lipsky’s Although of Course You End up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace. It’s mostly a transcript of conversations between Lipsky and DFW over five days in March 1996, while Wallace was on a book tour for “Infinite Jest.” As you might expect, DFW comes across as brilliant but [...]

I’m looking forward to my first Litquake in San Francisco. The 12th annual literary festival takes place Oct. 7-15 and features writers like James Ellroy and Thomas McGuane. It culminates in a big Lit Crawl around the Mission District. I’ll be reading Oct. 15 at Words on the Waves, an afternoon of events on Sausalito [...]

Just read Stephen King’s On Writing. Loved this bit about the craft of writing fiction and, well, something else altogether: At its most basic, we are only discussing a learned skill, but do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and [...]