At GQ, there was never a temptation to pander or preach to the choir because I had no concept of who the reader was or what that reader might want.

The justification for rap rock seems to be that if you take really bad rock and put really bad rap over it, the result is somehow good, provided the raps are barked by an overweight white guy with cropped hair and forearm tattoos.

Ireland starts for me with the end of The Dead, which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.

We live in such constant nearness to the abyss of past time that the moment is endlessly sucked into.

Reporting provides reminders that things are always more complicated than you think.

It is a curious fact that the word essayist showed up in English before it existed in French.

This is why you can never reason true Christians out of the faith. It's not, as the adage has it, because they were never reasoned into it - many were - it's that faith is a logical door which locks behind you. What looks like a line of thought is steadily warping.