I have long wished the Confederate states had been allowed to secede. My reservation is that secession would have prolonged slavery. Although I have read arguments that even in an independent South, slavery couldn't have endured, the institution

To his surprise, my friend Neil was recently invited to a former neighbor's housewarming party at her new home. Neil's vision, never great, has deteriorated in recent years. He took a taxi there and was greeted at the door by the host, his former

I was honored this week when The New Yorker printed a version of a letter I submitted in response to an article discussing the enigmatic notion of equality. You can read the published version of my letter here. It's impossible for me to read that

I have just learned of a touching act of generosity by the headmaster of a school I attended long ago. For logistical reasons, and possibly also for cultural ones, it would be neither possible nor needed today. In July 1967, I completed my second

You lie, I lie, we all lie. Especially politicians, right? Is there anywhere a handhold of truth we can cling to? In Nana Krame Adjei-Brenyah's apocalyptic story, "The Era," included in Best American Short Stories 2019), truthtellers have taken

An awkward situation for all concerned is when a parent and young child encounter a blind person walking with a white cane. How many times have I, that person with the cane, heard the child say something like, "Mommy, what's that?" or "Daddy, why is

If I tell Tricia that blonde doesn't look good on her, she'll be annoyed. She'll think I'm harping on again about being old. Well, we're both getting old—are old. Why is it that helping friends always gets you into trouble? Not that Tricia's

1 Is it wrong to appreciate works created by artists who have done bad things? These days the quandary arises around #MeToo transgressions, but it has been around for as long as there has been art. The question comes to my mind in connection with a

I got pushback against my claim in last week's post that much of the nation hijacked the September 11 tragedy that befell Manhattan's Financial District. Superficially, the historical record supports the pushbacker view. Everyone around the country

A recent experience has caused me to consider yet again the difficulties inherent in writing about someone else, above all a friend. An essay I worked on for two weeks caused such distress to a good friend that I abandoned the project before

Think of a song, and chances are you’ll think of a moment or a someone. Think of another song, and you’ll probably think of another moment, another someone. A piece of music might pop up when you call to mind a parent, a child, a friend, a certain

This 75-page compilation brings together excerpts I previously posted individually from the childhood sections of my unpublished memoir, Spiral to Edinburgh. The first excerpt goes back to when I was five or six. The next series relates my boarding

Marshall McLuhan famously wrote, “The medium is the message.” My own experience suggests that theater can compete with the message. When a talking head appears on a political show on television, a viewer’s reaction might be less to the words they

I’ve been asked to comment on an influential foundation’s report advocating for greater participation by disabled people in movies and on television. In case my comments have broader interest, below is the slightly edited response I

Could I have saved us? Despite my better judgment, this question haunts my sleep. Perhaps the most basic flaw in our Recoline civilization is that we forget history. To recite what ought to be common knowledge, the Magnitokes were a genetic

In my childhood, I had many painful goodbyes with Dad, including two during my four months in hospitals when I was thirteen. One, the evening after I’d had a long operation, was compelled by the visiting hours that English hospitals strictly enforce.

Last Saturday, here in Brooklyn, the wind brought a freshness to an afternoon that otherwise would have been too hot. It brought to mind a late afternoon in Montreal forty-five years ago, even though this is now mid-spring and that was oppressive

Last week a charity’s representative contacted my father, who is hospitalized with pancreatic cancer, to get him to send a $30,000 contribution he’d apparently committed to before falling ill. When I heard, I was annoyed. But then I recalled times

When someone offers to say a prayer for us, can it be offensive? My religion-skeptic father is seriously ill. One of his friends prayed for him right there in the hospital room, while another said she would do so on her own. Ever unwilling to rock

When does morality make a difference? This question came to mind as I listened to a Freakonomics podcast on possibly viable meat alternatives and the environmental damage done by meat production. One of the podcast’s interviewees, Mike Selden,

From time to time, we take stock of our parents. It must be because I’m going through such a phase that the chapter below, which I wrote long ago, has been on my mind. It appears halfway through my unpublished second novel, Hunger to Be

Up there, in the mist and passing clouds, is a yellow crane: not the bird, but the manmade mechanism whose arm rises as it lifts heavy objects, moves sideways somewhere, then lowers as it deposits them. How can a heavy machine like a crane stay so

A beloved uncle and aunt, husband-and-wife farmers, named their first cow Rebecca, a lovely, sweet-tempered red and white Ayrshire, and we all fell for her. My uncle and aunt couldn’t bring themselves to have her killed, and so she died of old age.

I’ve just finished reading the 2018 edition of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s venerable Best American Short Stories (BASS), and I feel I’ve been brought up to date with my politics, above all, the political grievances I ought to feel. But should

Did Mark Twain say, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why”? The quotation was included one morning in a post to a list for writers that I belong to. A man I’ll call Pangloss, after the