The Great Recession is not imaginary, and the effects loom large. There was an article in the NYT about the galloping death rate among white men in middle age. Higher than among any other demographic, etc. Mostly death by drugs, alcohol, or suicide. Many of them rural. My feeling is that it's many people who haven't been able to get back into the work force. Reg Morse is an example of the problem.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.

I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.

I'm not the guy to ask about the most up to date stuff.

I made this list of stuff that it's time for me to try to do.

I don't know exactly how long the book as we know it will exist, but I fully expect to make it to my death without having to give up on books.

Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment.