Articles

The Tourist is somewhere between 007 and The Pink Panther. Milo Weaver
is a bad-ass spy: a tourist. But he's also sick of espionage. He's in
it for one more game, in a Bret Favre kind of way. When kick-ass spies
start to age a bit, their secret tool: duct tape. Weaver must balance
his career and his family; who doesn’t? Ultimately, Olen Steinhauer

1. Having not slept in four days I felt myself become another person.
2. Each other day half further fumbled; my brain one slight shade darker every waking hour.
3. Changeling. Scrambled.
4. 17 hours of sleep deprivation has been shown to cause a decrease in performance equivalent to a .05% blood-alcohol level.
5. Apparently I've been getting drunk since I was 10.

Listen to the interview (44:42):

MY NABOKOV

Today's question comes from Brad Green, who recently requested that I feature Benjamin Percy in a future Writers Respond segment. Brad sent along the following question:

I've been following the writing of Thomas Glave, whose story, "The Torturer's Wife," appears in the most recent Kenyon Review and absolutely floored me. Immediately after finishing this story, I searched for him online and found "Whose Song?" in The Barcelona Review.

Anthony Doerr is author of The Shell Collector, a collection of stories (2003); About Grace, a novel (2005); and Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World, a memior (2007). Feel free to click each image for more information.

Dear Richard,

I read this poem when it came out in Ploughshares and loved it. Love it still. It crossed paths with me recently, so I looked you up and found your site, and I'm writing because you were at the University of Redlands the same year I was. Small world.

Meghan O’Rourke’s first collection of poetry, Halflife (W.W Norton, 2007), is an enjoyable read that explores the theme of decay - the titular halflife – through a journey of experiences both real and imagined. Divided into five sections, each section represents a different stage of decay.

When it comes to hardcover books, I rarely remove the dust jacket while I’m reading it. Generally, I prefer the feel of the dust jacket in my hands, with its texture of newness. But when I started The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine, I was compelled to remove the jacket, placing it in a secure place on my shelf. Not that there is anything wrong with the dust jacket—it is a fine design.