December 2007
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"You know, I hear the word 'experiment' and reach for my revolver. I don’t think of myself as an experimental writer. Experimental writing is about the experiment, and experiments per se usually are for their own sake. My interest is in whatever serves the larger story or characters. The numbers in Zeroville were a kind of Godardian conceit and just came to me, in the same way that Kristin 'swimming' through Our Ecstatic Days came to me at the moment she goes down through the hole at the bottom of the lake that’s flooded L.A., and that she believes has come to take her small son from her."
by
Angela Stubbs
"What concerns me most is that the alleged cure for social anxiety disorder is often a great deal worse than the disease. Honestly, what good does it do people who dislike speaking in public if they take an anti-anxiety pill such as Paxil and, as the drug maker forewarns, one of the drug’s side effects is... anxiety?"
by
Jason B. Jones
"In the '30s when Stalin was coming to power, you could see the writers who were sent to the gulag or executed, and there were those who tended to say that they weren’t going to write anymore and spend a quiet life with the wife and kids. You really can’t divide the heroes from the cowards, because I really can’t blame anybody for not choosing death. We’re not all martyrs. It’s a tough choice and it’s easier to push someone else into the pot and say, 'Be a hero!'"
by
John Zuarino
At first, I had thought it was kind of wild, being asked to speak in a session called “In Whose Image: Bonobos, Sin, and Transcendence,” co-sponsored by AAR’s Science, Technology, and Religion Group and the Animals and Religion Consultation. The theme stretched my mind. If, as many scientists including me think, bonobos (and other great apes) are self-conscious, express empathy and a kind of moral awareness in their social groups, what implications exist for a notion of the Imago Dei, humans created in God’s image?
by
Barbara J. King
"The Life Room began, along with the conceit of creating an esteemed, empathetic female character, with a single question: What is the nature of erotic desire that it can potentially devastate a woman’s life? When Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary fell into the throes of all consuming love, their worlds crumbled. Decades have passed since those novels were written and yet have the inner lives of women plunged into this moral struggle changed?"
by
Jill Bialosky
I’m always bothered by the stress placed upon the proper literary books for young people. In an effort to strike a blow for the interests of children who love forming questions and finding answers (among other nonfiction sorts of things) I’ve found some well written titles that will produce delight and joy in all the right sorts of ways. They may not lead to a love of Austen and Fitzgerald, but they will make certain readers very happy. And that, when it comes to books and young people, is really the only point that ought to matter.
by
Colleen Mondor
