Samizdat Blog

When asked the question “what do you do?” who is entitled to reply “I’m a writer”?   That’s the question animating an essay by Tom Co...

George Orwell was many things—martyr, masochist, moralist, Etonian malcontent—but he was not a particularly scrupulous scholar.   So w...

Those of you who have booked me for a lecture, poetry reading, radio spot, celebrity roast, bris, or beauty pageant have been getting...

Gently Read Literature , the excellent little magazine edited by Daniel Casey, has folded up shop.  I only wrote for GRL  once, in th...