(some publications)

2010

"A Museum of One's Own," The American Prospect (January, 2010)

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGE: "It's hard to imagine the two-story house on East 86th Street in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood ever becoming a tourist destination. Pizza crusts, empty bags of spicy potato chips, and wrapping papers litter the green carpet. Huge holes dot the walls where the fixtures have been ripped out. The back door is open. "People will spend all day trying to get 10 cents worth of copper," says Jay Gardner, the community-development director for the Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation, as he picks up an old grate and puts it across the door latch to prevent another break-in" [read more].

2009

"Handwriting Is History," Miller-McCune (December, 2009)

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGE: "For many, the prospect of handwriting dying out would signal the end of individualism and the entree to some robotic techno-future. (As one comment on my article put it, “What’s next, putting programming chips in our brains?”) But when we worry about losing our individuality, we are likely misremembering our schooling, which included rote, rigid lessons in handwriting. We have long been taught the “right” way to form letters. The history of American penmanship is dominated by two true believers, Platt Rogers Spencer and A.N. Palmer, whose fiercely moral and economic attachments to their scripts nicely sum up much of what we consider essential to American identity…" [read more].

"Fading From View: Was Thomas Wolfe a genius? And should we care?" Oxford American (September, 2009)

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGE: "The Thomas Wolfe Memorial, in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, is being swallowed up. New developments are dwarfing the yellow frame house on every side, like that little pink house in Virginia Lee Burton’s classic children’s book. First, the Renaissance Hotel went up across the street. Then, in the summer of 2006, a developer scooped up a parking lot catty-corner from the Renaissance and began construction on new, upscale condominiums."

"We Are All Writers Now," More Intelligent Life (June, 2009)

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGE: "The chattering classes have become silent, tapping their views on increasingly smaller devices. And tapping they are: the screeds are everywhere, decrying the decline of smart writing, intelligent thought and proper grammar. Critics bemoan blogging as the province of the amateurism. Journalists rue the loose ethics and shoddy fact-checking of citizen journalists. Many save their most profound scorn for the newest forms of social media. Facebook and Twitter are heaped with derision for being insipid, time-sucking, sad testaments to our literary degradation. This view is often summed up with a disdainful question: 'Do we really care about what you ate for lunch?'…" [read more].

2008

"Stop Teaching Catcher in the Rye," GOOD (August, 2008)

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGE: “Why is The Catcher in the Rye still a rite of high school English? Sure, J.D. Salinger’s novel was edgy and controversial when teachers first put it on their syllabi. But that was 50 years ago. Today, Salinger’s novel lacks the currency or shock value it once had, and has lost some of its critical cachet…” [read more]

"Learning from Nantucket," Dwell (June, 2008)

“I am looking at my favorite photograph of my summer house in Nantucket. It is not a particularly pretty picture. It was taken on a cloudy and gray ay. You can not see the beach, or the moors, or much of the house itself. What you can see is this: in the foreground a man, dressed more like a European tourist visiting a church than a…” [read more]

2007

"On Finally Seeing the Polish Rider at the Frick Museum," AGNI (November, 2007)

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGE: “I was married while a PhD student in English literature. My betrothed was a fellow doctoral candidate. At the wedding, the best man read Frank O’Hara’s, “Having A Coke With You.” I was, there, at the altar, an already ravished bride. I had never heard O’Hara’s poem until that moment when I stood, ringletted, trembling…” [read more]

"On the Allure of Collecting Hypermodern Literature," GOOD (October, 2007)

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGE: “Ignoring first editions of the King James Bible, illustrated medieval manuscripts, and fine-press editions of Pride and Prejudice, I scoured the aisles of this spring’s New York Antiquarian Book Fair at the New York Armory. I was indifferent to the museum pieces and objets d’art. I was looking for the…" [read more]

"The Ethics of Trauma Drama," The Chronicle of Higher Education (May, 2007)

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGE: “In the fall, I helped low-income high-school seniors draft application essays to selective colleges. As we wait for acceptance or rejection letters, I’m spending the time asking myself about an ethical quandary that has troubled me throughout the process…” [read more]

"Snow Globe," The Believer (March, 2007)

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGE: “The other day I went into the Logan Airport Hudson News to buy a Boston snow globe. At first, I couldn’t find one. Then I spotted a few huddled on the top shelf behind the baked bean T-shirts. I brought down a skyline model with confetti stars and brought it to the register…” [read more]