What makes things interesting to the reader? It depends on the quality of writing and perception—which, I suppose, is what ...

The astronauts who planted their feet on the moon were outfitted in the same glaring white as a wedding dress.” ...

It’s a good time to investigate the paradoxes and special strangeness of Andy Kaufman and Paul Reubens, oddly alike in some ...

Casting Miss World 1994 as the second-prettiest sister would make the metaphysics of their romance totally unrecognizable ...

But Goshen was not an attempt at charity. It was, according to my parents’ interpretation of scripture, a tangible ...

Emma has been called a detective novel, and with good reason: the fun of first reading it consists largely in scrutinizing ...

My new job came with a research stipend. I’d never had one before—a few grand that would renew each year for five years and then end. What could I use it for? “Anything,” I was told, which seemed ...

The world’s first screen saver was not like a dream at all. It was a blank screen. It was called SCRNSAVE, and when it was released in 1983 it was very exciting to a niche audience. It was like John ...

I tend not to think that stuff other people think is obvious is obvious. Everyone feels like they have some sense of Frost. Everyone knows a poem or two. That kind of overexposure lends an aspect of ...

If there’s a trick to writing a libretto, it’s thinking first about what’s happening onstage and not about what characters are saying. With that in mind, I realized early on that since the novel is ...

Franz Kafka’s story “Investigations of a Dog” might be retitled “Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Dog.” In any event, Kafka did not assign a title to the story, which he left unpublished and ...