Sometime in 1987, I think, I accidentally got to hear Toni Morrison read at a private gathering. I was a neophyte assistant at a large publisher in New York City. A sympathetic editor had offered … more

The best thing about sailing, as far as I’m concerned, is that when you do it right it’s really boring. more

“A Journal of the Plague Year,” Daniel Defoe’s short book about the 1665 outbreak in London of what is believed to have been bubonic plague, is never a comforting read; it is even less so in these times of a global pandemic. more