My Life and Thoughts

Dear readers!  I am still greatly chagrined about having to miss not only the Chicago reading but also the visit to Redlands University, where I had been enormously looking forward to meeting Alisa Slaughter, Joy Manesiotis (author of a very beautiful and apropos poem about lamenting women), and their students, whom I thank for their interest in The Possessed, and whom I very much hope to meet at some point in the future.

In the meantime, tolerant readers, you may or may not be filled with admiration to learn that I was able to spare a moment from my rigorous program of swamp-related activity in order to deliver a 200-word opinion on the future of evolutionary-psychological literary criticism, for which purpose I temporarily assumed the form of a miniscule talking head:

The original of that tiny photograph was taken by super-chef Musa Dağdeviren and, in its uncropped version, shows me holding a bunch of greens known in Turkish as “snake’s pillow” or “heathen’s beet.”

(more…)

Dear friends and readers!  I am sorry to report that I am TOTALLY SWAMPED by an amazing (to me) variety of circumstances, and will have to postpone the Chicago reading originally scheduled for April 6.  Only God and I know how much I was looking forward to seeing my incredibly dear Chicago readers, and how sad I am about this delay, but I’m really hoping to reschedule for late spring.  Meanwhile, if nothing else goes wrong, I should be returning to normal life in approximately two weeks.  Until then, I won’t be able to read or respond to non-urgent emails—please believe that it isn’t because I’m too busy with my hedge analyst friends.  Any publishing- or publicity-related inquiries should please be addressed to someone who gets paid to answer them.  Thank you for your understanding, and I hope this finds you all more comfortably situated than it leaves, at present, your humble servant:

This is where my staff and I will be living for the next 2 weeks.