Working with Robert A. Caro
What I learned from historian and journalist Robert A. Caro’s 2019 book, Working. On research: “Of course there was more. If you ask the right questions, there always is. That’s the problem.” “It’s the research that takes the time — the research and whatever it is in myself that makes the research take so long, […]
Epistolary Nonfiction
I was thinking the other day about epistolary novels, based on documents, traditionally letters but sometimes diary entries or other correspondence (could be emails, tweets, texts, blog posts, etc). Over the years, I’ve read some I really liked — Samantha Harvey’s Dear Thief (a kind of “cover novel” of Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat); A. […]
The Book That Changed My Life
As a teenager and into my early 20s, I loved writing and music. Influenced by the rock revolution led by The Beatles and Stones, I played bass in a band. Influenced by Rolling Stone magazine, Creem, and The Village Voice‘s pop music coverage, I planned to attend journalism school. Instead, in 1975, I became an […]
Whose View to Choose?
I have long believed that all memoirs are written in first person. Why? Well, because the majority of them are, but also because readers expect the writer of a memoir to be a reliable narrator, someone they trust is telling the truth about themselves to the best of their memory. Now, rather late in life, […]
The Multi-Color Pen
Bic introduced the first multi-color pen in April 1970 in France. Soon other manufacturers were making them. While kids, like me, loved the novelty of them, the original purpose was practical: people who needed multiple colors of ink in their work would no longer have to carry around several different pens. Unlike latter-day fountain pens, […]
Yaggy’s 19th Century Publishing Empire
Levi Walter Yaggy was an inventor, writer, and publisher in Chicago. His 1886 Yaggy Anatomical Study of Human Anatomy (used in medical schools and by physicians) was considered a landmark of its era, especially for its use of pop-ups. The folio contained large charts, or “manikens,” of the human anatomy, including the skeleton, muscles, nervous […]
Untangling a Family Mystery
This is how it began, and how it would end, on the long pale strand of a Lincolnshire beach in the last hour of sun, the daylight moon small as a kite in the sky. Far below, a child of three was playing by herself with a new tin spade. It was still strangely warm […]
Richard Preston’s ‘The Hot Zone’: This book about viruses changed everything
The book was not only a bestseller in the ‘dark biology’ genre, but it changed how the world viewed pandemics By David Hayes, The National Post, April 8, 2020 With the COVID-19 pandemic raging, I found myself looking through my bookshelves for a paperback copy of Richard Preston’s 1994 bestseller, The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True […]
Cultivated Classifieds
SOBER JEAN RHYS seeks 60ish Dr. Zhivago, inebriated with joy. Your grandchildren are Trapp Family clones. Your prostate is on hiatus and your dog is named Scaramouche or Scaramutt. CHANGING TIMES: Retired professor and lifelong nepiophile in his fifties, tall, handsome, and loving, seeks passionate, nurturing, and adoring Mommy for spiritual fulfillment, intellectual communion, emotional […]
Reading With Lorenzo Mattotti
Lorenzo Mattotti is an Italian artist & illustrator based in Paris. He’s done New Yorker covers and his work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Le Monde. He illustrated Neil Gailman’s 2014 children’s book, Hansel & Gretel and Lou Reed’s 2011 book, The Raven, and is also a graphic novelist whose most celebrated work was Dr. […]