“The real war will never get in the books.” - Walt Whitman, Specimen Days On the fifth of July, I got up early to lace my mom’s corset. She was 64 years old, and in a couple of hours, she would be standing in a field, washing laundry over a fire pit in a copper tub at the 150th anniversary reenactment of the battle of Gettysburg. The corset would serve as her back brace. Like…

For better and for worse, we’re living in an age of remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings. We absolutely should comment about the shortage of original material, but we can’t let the products of the remake machine go to waste. Everything we produce reflects something of our time and quality back at us, something we should understand and take with us. Remakes are necessary things that give us new lights and angles where we can examine stories.

Almost certainly one of the silliest things I have ever done.

“Guilty Conscience,” Eminem – I was afraid of cursing. Technically that’s an understatement because at the time I was afraid of almost everything, but I was especially afraid of cursing. The first time I heard this song, in the summer of 2000 (kids who are afraid of cursing are not the kind who actively seek out Eminem albums) the Tourette's and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that I had always shown minor traces of had begun to…

Once there was a tree and she loved a little boy. And everyday the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest. He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples. And the apples stained his mouth a strange color and it wasn't green and it wasn't red and the stain wouldn't go away no matter how much…

Jane Air  "Thanks for flying Jane Air. Are you escaping for business or for pleasure? Will you be stowing any wives today?" King LearJet "Welcome to LearJet. Are you traveling alone, or like two birds i'the cage?" The Quiet American Airlines "One has to take sides, if one is to remain human. Your side is just past the attendant's station, on the right-hand side of the plane."…

When Sarah Rees Brennan asked me to write a companion essay to her piece on the many issues women face in self-promotion, I had just returned from a trip to Austin, Texas, where I was promoting my most recent novel, Inheritance, at the Austin Teen Book Festival. I was about to leave for Wordstock, a book festival in Portland, Oregon, to continue this promotion. I began writing this essay in my friend’s house…

I am going to say "bitch" a lot. I do not like or use the word much, but I'm going to be talking a lot about reaction to female creators, and this is the only way I know how to discuss the experience of getting that word over and over again, until it is expected, until the chorus becomes a dull roar. It's a word that shows up every day in my inbox and in…

Previously: A Partial But By No Means Exhaustive List of Egg References in the Works of P.G. Wodehouse "'Talking of being eaten by dogs, there’s a dachshund at Brinkley who when you first meet him will give you the impression that he plans to convert you into a light snack between his regular meals. Pay no attention. It’s all eyewash. His belligerent attitude is simply—' 'Sound and fury signifying nothing, sir?' 'That’s it. Pure swank.

A Successful Poet Is Selling Poetry He has really nailed it this time, he is fairly sure. No matter what the workshop junkies said about his old “limpdick collection.” Forget all those auto-rejections from Poetry magazine. (Nearby, Pike Place salesman smack halibuts down on ice.) He’s got a whole new approach this time, and these babies are jaunty as hell. His talent’s leaping all over the page, even Karen wouldn’t disagree. (A few feet away a…

We need to have a serious conversation about this. I only want to help you. I also get a lot of emails from Feel the Burn-ers asking me how to cook meat, because I eat a ton of meat, and seem like someone who knows how to cook it (you are correct). First up, if you are a vegan or a vegetarian, you already do not buy boneless skinless chicken breasts, so this does…

A few suggestions.

Previously: How to tell if you are in a Haruki Murakami novel.  1. You are on a train, but no one can find you. You are leaning out of your car window making cryptic statements about love to a man you have only just met. Your silhouette is impossible. 2. You are doing something you do not want to, for reasons you cannot explain, with someone you are obsessed with for no earthly reason.

Ariel Levy's piece in The New Yorker. I want to make it very clear that this is the saddest story in the world, and it will be a very long time before you may also be able to understand how it is also a work of great beauty, and you do not have to read it unless that sounds okay to you. Mom and Aunt Peggy, I know you read The Toast,

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