A man whose father left him as a baby decided he wanted to find out about his father and where he’d gone. After decades and networks of research and with the help of some DNA detective work, he learned at the age of 82 what he wanted to know. This story, “DNA Reveals Story of […] Read More

A big piece of the boldness equation is going full-tilt after what draws you, what you care about. Saturday night my dear old friend Susie came to dinner; we had not seen each other in 41 years. Until our mid-teens, we lived one door away from each other, and had played together from my earliest […] Read More

A Newsweek article, “America’s New Shrink“, on Obama said that his model is FDR (we all knew that), who based his New Deal on (here’s the juicy item): faith in “bold, persistent experimentation.” I love the phrase: bold, persistent experimentation. And I too have faith in that method. It’s so often the basis for revising […] Read More

Philip Roth’s birthday was noted on Garrison Keillor’s almanac, and included a choice bit of wisdom that should urge us all to boldness. Note that Roth is the novelist who reached his first fame with Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), about a man obsessed with sex. Roth is quoted as saying: “I cannot and do not live […] Read More

I did something this morning that I’ve been telling myself I needed to do for weeks, perhaps months. Cleaned the aquarium. This involves a siphon and a tube that runs over the side and into a bucket. It vacuums up goldfish waste. What a surprise that I don’t get around to it too often. But […] Read More

I just put in the mail the family history I threw together over five intense days; sent it to my Mom for her birthday. Now I feel like I finished exams, even more so than I do when finishing the draft of a book. I worked on this little 30 page item like a madwoman. […] Read More

I’m alarmed and saddened by the ongoing disaster in the newspaper industry. Yesterday was a sort of Black Monday here in Raleigh, another long list of very good reporters and editors got their pink slips at The News & Observer. In the last few weeks, one major American paper has died and another has cut […] Read More

For the last three days, I’ve worked enormous numbers of hours on an unlikely-for-me project: a bit of genealogy that I’m turning into a riveting story of one line of my family: the Tuckers and Woffords. Months ago my mother gave me a folder about her father’s family, a bunch of bits and pieces, and […] Read More

Here are a few more blossoms to remind you to spring forth with your own brilliant creations. Even though the climate might create some obstacles. Years ago, I said to my therapist about the market for literary novels: “you don’t know what’s it’s like, it’s working in a cage with a tiger.” (Not the most […] Read More

Spring is without question the boldest time of year, sending tender shoots and delicate flowers up into iffy weather. March is a bit like a writer sending out a manuscript, or anyone who’s hunting for a new job in a tough economy. As T.S. Eliot wrote in “The Waste Land” about the cruelly unpredictable and […] Read More