Barry Hannah will leave a gaping hole in literature. His influence on my own work is strangely subtle and roundabout (I know him more for his influence on others–especially Tom Franklin–than for anything else), but when I think about the stories I’ve read, I realize how deeply effective they were. For all the brashness ofContinue reading “Barry Hannah”
Tag Archives: in memoriam
Good-bye, Mr. Salinger
J. D. Salinger is dead. We can’t say the world will miss him, because we’ve been missing him for almost 40 years. And if Hemingway’s example is anything to go by, I hope we never do see the novels he never intended us to read, for the sake of his legacy. But he did leaveContinue reading “Good-bye, Mr. Salinger”
On a life, our liberty, and the pursuit of reading: a reflection on the life and work of Judith Krug
Two years ago, I had the great privilege of eating dinner with Judith Krug. My wife was giving a two-hour presentation on librarians in film at the annual conference of the Wisconsin Library Association, and as a member of WLA’s Intellectual Freedom Roundtable, she also got to meet and work briefly with Judith Krug, theContinue reading “On a life, our liberty, and the pursuit of reading: a reflection on the life and work of Judith Krug”
Madeleine L’Engle
Madeleine L’Engle has died. When Kurt Vonnegut died on April 11 of this year, I kept silent most of the day and mourned the rest of the week. Vonnegut had a huge impact not only on my early fiction-writing but also on my early philosophical development: In both areas, he taught me not to takeContinue reading “Madeleine L’Engle”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 