Author Archives: williamjcobb

Here’s a gem from Sunday’s NY Times “Inside the List” piece in the Book Review: HARRY POTTER, YEAR ZERO: Speaking of Harry, here are the 10 titles grown-ups were reading when “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the first book … Continue reading →

So I’m reading the NY Times this morning and encounter a head-in-the-sand scolding the notion of Peak Oil here: www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/opinion/25lynch.html I’ve read much about this idea and some of it includes (hopefully) laughable doomsday scenarios, and some of it seems … Continue reading →

I wrote the following as a request for a former student, to be posted on the Southeast Review’s webpage: Mystery in Storytelling One of the tricks in story telling—and believe me, there’s a hundred tricks that the best writers use … Continue reading →

So I noticed this little gem this morning, in Newsweek, an article titled “Isolation Increases in U.S.” (www.newsweek.com/id/213088) Here’s a quote from it: “Social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace may provide people with a false sense of connection that ultimately … Continue reading →

After about two weeks of traveling, which included visiting family in St. Louis, I’m back in Pennsylvania, house painting, breathing a sigh that I have DirecTV again. The various motels we slept in while crossing the Heartland all seemed to … Continue reading →

That’s like a J.P. Donleavy title, isn’t it? No one mentions Donleavy anymore. He was a great comic novelist in the Sixties and Seventies. One of his titles is The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (1968). He’s good. His best novel … Continue reading →

So this morning the NY Times reports that an amateur astronomer discovered what appears to be an impact spot on Jupiter that’s the size of the Earth. Check it out here: thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/amateur-astronomer-finds-new-earth-size-impact-mark-on-jupiter/?hp At first I puzzled over what could be … Continue reading →

As a writer it’s easy to kvetch and snipe about other writers and the failings of their books, and especially what makes up the Bestseller List, which often seems like crap in one form on another: For a funny take … Continue reading →

Here’s the link to my review of Marcel Theroux’s novel, Far North, published today in the Dallas Morning News:  http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-bk_farnorth_0705gd.ART.State.Edition1.4bb28ee.html

So like all good Americans I spent the 4th of July chopping wood for winter and taping my two-year-old capering about in my backyard, wearing a bucket on her head and swinging in the hammock, crying, “Higher, please!” Later I … Continue reading →