the Richard Larson blog

... St. Louis as a ''city lost in the middle.'' ''I've always found it interesting,'' the narrator of ''Reunion'' observes, ''that it was both the boyhood home of T. S. Eliot, and only 85 years before that, the starting point of westward expansion. It's a place, I suppose, the world can't get away from fast enough.''

Oh, Richard Ford... amazing.

But people make such a big deal out of it - shooting a book - it's not like I shot her.

Pirates!

My review of Fast Ships, Black Sails, an anthology of pirate stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, has been posted at Strange Horizons.

Shakespeare in the Park: NYC

The best thing about the "Shakespeare in the Park" presentation of Twelfth Night, which I saw on opening night two days ago, was the raccoon that happened to wander onstage during the first act. He took one look at what was happening up there and immediately ran the other way, which is, in fact, what more of us in the audience should have done. Luckily, there was wine.

Pico Iyer, "The Joy of Less"

If you’re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn’t where your joy lies. In New York, a part of me was always somewhere else, thinking of what a simple life in Japan might be like. Now I’m there, I find that I almost never think of Rockefeller Center or Park Avenue at all.