Note-taking is important to me: a week's worth of reading notes (or "thoughts I had in the shower" notes) is cumulatively more interesting than anything I might be able to come up with on a single given day.

The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

Life's too short for anxious score-keeping

I schooled in the Boston area.

I'm grateful for the likes of Kundera, Murnane, Markson, Berger, and, in his recent work, Coetzee. But no matter how celebrated they are, critics still consider them askance. Elizabeth Costello, for example, is a great novel, but it got quite a critical panning when it was published. The complaint was that it was simply a book of speeches, without the machinery of conventional fiction. Markson's books are compilations of facts and alleged facts, very artfully.

The creative part of oneself finds its way out. In this case, I got interested particularly in the medium of Twitter and looked for ways to use it creatively.

I'm not hopeful about America, and I'm not hopeful about the world, no. Life goes on and, for those of us who are lucky, there's a great deal to enjoy in it. But will things get better for most people? I don't know. I don't see the evidence.