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Searching for Richard Yates
I’m sure you’ve heard this before: if it’s on your Facebook profile, it’s official. So let it be known that my religion is Richard Yates. Richard Yates was a writer who still isn’t as well known as he...
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Careless Whisper
My wife Dawn and I took our dog Ginny to classes. We took her to playgroups. We gave her love and affection and discipline and water, plenty of water, because a dog was supposed to have fresh water at...
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Whirlwind
Fourteen years ago, I started an online magazine. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a big deal now, since anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can create an online presence, but back in March...
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There May Not Be Crying in Baseball, but There Is in Tennis
Believe it or not, the Super Bowl wasn’t the only major sporting event that took place yesterday. Earlier, the men’s final of the Australian Open in tennis was on ESPN2 at the wee hours of the morning....
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Mumble and Mumble
A little while ago, I saw the word “mumblecore” in reference to a film. Finally! I thought. Some smart person has labeled this issue that’s been bothering me for at least a decade now. Unfortunately,...
View ArticleEverything Asian
You’re twelve years old. A month has passed since your Korean Air flight landed in lovely Newark Airport. Your sixteen-year-old sister is miserable. Your mother isn’t exactly happy, either. You just...
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Star Trek Through the Years
For the last two weeks, I had intended to write up a little review of the new Star Trek film, but then I got thinking about what this franchise has meant to me. Don’t worry — I’m not some loon who...
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How Generation X Changed My Life
On June 25, I did a reading in New York City for an event titled “Generation XYZ.” What appears below is the essay that I delivered. You can watch the video of the reading here. When April asked me to...
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Book Review: J. Robert Lennon’s Pieces for the Left Hand
Every time I open a new book of fiction, there’s a part of me that hopes for the improbable: to encounter something new, something utterly original. So as you can imagine, I’m let down a lot. But...
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GP-Yes!
At this point in my life, I’m used to getting lost. There are some people who have no idea how lucky they are, blessed with an organic compass embedded into their brains, but I’m not one of them. To...
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Book Review (of sorts): Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed
I’m a man, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I like romantic comedies. Notting Hill is my favorite, a picture-perfect execution of the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl,...
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The R Word
We’re sorry to inform you…there were many strong entries…we wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere. You’d think that after twenty years of writing, revising, and submitting, these responses of...
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The Last Chink in the Armor
From various newspapers around the country: If there has been one chink in the Lakers’ armor this year… Twitter’s rise, however, exposed a chink in Facebook’s armor… “It was a chink in the armor,” says...
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Life Missing Matrimony Novelist, or Four Short Reviews of Four Novels
There was a time in my life when I read purely for pleasure. Before then, I read pretty much for pain, or more accurately, I read and it caused me pain. Like reading Thoreau’s Walden and Stephen...
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No Deliverance
Sunday night, I was sitting at our dining room table, half watching the football game between the Manning brothers and wholly reading James Dickey’s Deliverance. It was about ten o’clock, and the moon...
View ArticleSung J. Woo: The TNB Self-Interview
Do you get the feeling that this self-interview is actually more like a self-conscious-interview? Yes. I have to tell you, and by you I mean me, that this just feels odd. I’ve read the other ones on...
View Article“The Pagoda Music Box” – An Excerpt From Everything Asian
“It’s time to talk about talking,” Sylvia said. “So we’re just talking to each other about talking, just talking,” Mindy said. Sylvia held up the small music box. Mindy caught a flash of the gold...
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Madness, Thy Name Is Second Novel
For the last month, I could see the end, that moment when I’d write the last sentence of my second novel. I imagined there would be exaltation, relief, a supreme sense of satisfaction rolled into that...
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The Fast Food of Life: Terrence Malick at McDonald’s
Brother. Mother. It was they who led me to your Golden Arches. And to this forsaken ordering line. A man’s heart has heard two ways through lunch… the way of the Chicken McNugget and the way of the Big...
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A Letter of Apology to My First Draft
Dear Love Love, Yesterday, you were born. You were not an easy delivery, for the ink on my laser printer was ready to give out. I fed thirty sheets of you at a time so I could take out the toner and...
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