This piece was published on the departed website Bookslut in April, 2010. Titles are hard. You spend weeks or months or years on your work, and somewhere along the way you’re expected to encapsulate it in a few pithy words. It’s kind of draining, when you think about it. Maybe that’s why Mark Rothko used […]
Note: I pitched this piece to a few places and was met with silence. Rather than keep pitching and get paid somewhere between zero and and $50, I decided to post it here. Let me know what you think. —GH Late in 2020, I noticed among female friends and colleagues a certain desperation creeping into […]
When a certain very famous and very horrible person got sick, a lot of people celebrated, and then a lot of other people said that celebration was inappropriate. Some fellow Jews, however, counterclaimed that it is perfectly appropriate to wish suffering upon horrible people. I wasn’t sure if that was correct, at least from a […]
Freedom House rates Singapore as “partly free” and its press as “not free.” Given that Nick’s family enjoys a leading role in Singaporean business affairs, is it reasonable to assume that the Young family is complicit with an authoritarian government? Given the conspicuous overconsumption of fossils fuels—via multiple helicopters, an Audi R8, a shipping vessel, […]
For Religion & Politics, I interviewed the authors of Bible Nation, a new book about the Green family and their Hobby Lobby shenanigans. Then for the Forward, I went to D.C. and checked out the Greens’ new Museum of the Bible. (Spoiler alert: they got a lot wrong.) My story collection UGGS FOR GAZA is for […]
My new short story, His Grandmother’s Memory, is available here as an Amazon Kindle single. I read from my short story Publish and Perish for C-Span. I had a piece about the prosperity gospel in Religion & Politics. I had a piece about the key to understanding Bernie Sanders (hint, he’s an aging Jewish man) […]
Not much, maybe, but something. That’s the idea behind Dutch Kills Press, LLC. It’s the company I started to publish e-books. Each contributor earns 50% of the profit from his or her e-book. So if a contributor doesn’t earn much, neither does the company. The summer list is up. Check out the website. If you don’t have a Kindle […]
Video: “How do peasants die?” On the life and death of Tolstoy, famous vegetarian. I love me some novels and short stories. But I am particularly attracted to novellas. (Here’s mine! Buy them!) I was reminded of this after re-reading one that blew me away (see #20). So I thought I’d revisit my own list. […]
You may have read Negotiating Your Way to a Fair Adjunct Experience on Vitae. I am not linking to it because I have no interest in helping the Chronicle get more pageviews, even the modest number this blog may provide. Anyway. The piece is about how adjuncts should negotiate and be willing to walk if […]
Many people have asked me how I got so successful. “Gordon,” they say. “How did you get so much of the success?” The first thing I tell them is that behind every good man there is a good woman with a better job. The second thing I tell them is that success is less […]