The fifties were a very male period of writing in the United States. America didn’t have a tradition of women writers. Who, among women, were admired? Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter. Among poets? Emily Dickinson. How many others? In...
There was a time when I thought the Serbs would never get rid of Miloševic. Dictators give the impression of permanence. They convince themselves and the rest of us that they are going to be around forever. “Long live,” their enthusiastic...
The View from Castle Rock, Alice Munro’s collection of stories forthcoming from Knopf in November, will be her twelfth volume in a distinguished career that has spanned more than fifty-five years and has garnered resounding international...
At the Bulgaria-Serbia border, when the train sighed to a halt between high prisonlike fences with crooked chicken wire running on top, our compartment received two official visits—first from Bulgarian customs officers and later on, a few...