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I'm asked a lot what the best thing about cooking for a living is. And it's this: to be a part of a subculture. To be part of a historical continuum, a secret society with its own language and customs. To enjoy the instant gratification of making something good with one's hands -- using all one's s…

The pity of it all is the loneliness trapped inside Roth’s radiant poison. In The Anatomy Lesson (by now it’s 1983) Nathan Zuckerman cries out, “How have I come to be such an enemy and a flayer of myself? And so alone! Oh, so alone! Nothing but self ! Locked up in me!” For Zuckerman, life, from beg…

Jarrell once said that without literature human life was animal life. By literature, he meant, equally, both the writing of books and the reading of them. Reading, Jarrell thought, gave us back ourselves in a way that no other kind of non-material nourishment could match. In the ordinary dailiness …

Suddenly, literature, politics, and analysis came together, and I began to think more inclusively about the emotional imprisonment of mind and spirit to which all human beings are heir. In the course of analytic time, it became apparent that—with or without the burden of social justice—the effort r…

IN SCHOOL, THE TEACHER HELD A COMPOsition of mine up to the class when I was eight years old and said, “This little girl is going to be a writer.” At home—where Marx, socialism, and the international working class were articles of faith—my mother pressed my upper arm between two fingers and said, “…