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I have been living with the same person for thirty-six years. I cannot read this man’s mind. He has anterooms in his personality I strongly suspect I have never seen. Mysteries abound. And yet time has produced an uncanny mental mirroring between us. A friend tells a story, and it triggers an immed…

In the beginning there’s something very nebulous, a state of alert, a wariness, a curiosity. Something I perceive in the fog and vagueness which arouses my interest, curiosity, and excitement and then translates itself into work, note cards, the summary of the plot. Then when I have the outline and…

The joy is in the surprise. It can be as small as a felicitous coupling of noun and adjective. Or a whole new scene, or the sudden emergence of an unplanned character who simply grows out of a phrase. Literary criticism, which is bound to pursue meaning, can never really encompass the fact that som…

In the bottom of the ninth, with the score tied at five and Reina’s kids full of Coke, hotdogs, peanuts, and ice cream and getting restless, with Asunción clutching her rosary as if she were drowning and Hector Jr.’s nose stuck in some book, Dupuy taps him to hit for the pitcher with two down and F…

Cuba took more than a little getting used to. There was the heat: one team we played had a stadium that sat in a kind of natural bowl that held in the sun and dust. The dust floated around you like a golden fog. It glittered. Water streamed down your face and back. Your glove dripped. One of our gu…