My favorite writing teacher from my college days, memoirist Laurel Lee, died of pancreatic cancer last week in Oregon. She was 58 years old. Laurel was perhaps best known for her 1977 book Walking Through the Fire, which was a Christian-themed account of her simultaneous struggle with Hodgkin’s disease, a dangerous pregnancy, and the fact…
Book Review: As David Tomory’s A Season in Heaven reveals, the wanderers of the 1960s and 1970s were creative and intrepid — but they also tended to be petty, competitive, self-ghettoizing, and self-deluding. In short, they had the same charms and weaknesses as any self-conscious, authenticity-seeking counterculture movement of the last half-century.
This morning, I went on my obligatory monthly visa run to Kawthaung, the small Burmese border town that lies about 20 minutes by boat from my temporary home in Ranong, Thailand. Ranong is where I come to hole up and get my writing done, so I always welcome this visa run, which takes me across…
When he tries to infiltrate a movie set on a heavily guarded Thai island, Rolf embarks on a rollicking post-modern travel adventure, somewhat starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Book Review: Robert Bly’s The Sibling Society is the latest doom-oracle for those born after the advent of polyester clothing. Conveniently, society is never as good as it was during the time when a given doomsayer came of age, and everything since has been a slippery slide on the downward spiral.
