The Importance of Research for Novels and Memoirs
Research helps the writer develop a sense of mastery over their writing landscape.
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My Mother’s Suicides
When I was little I thought every mother tried to kill herself, at least now and then.
A Clean, Well-lighted Place
Recently, I went fly-fishing with a dear friend. We’ve known each other for ages, and both of us are old enough to know that we can no longer deny the fact that we are old men. Even though we didn’t catch anything, we assuaged our wounded egos by telling ourselves that we could still negotiate the river in waders without falling down, savor the beauty of the water cascading…
New England and the KKK
While most of the more recent Klan activities in Connecticut were neither large nor particularly violent, they do prove that New England was never immune from such overt forms of racism.
Notes on Inequality in America: A Little Housekeeping
Like a lot of comfortably middle-class people, we have a housekeeper. She’s Hispanic, an immigrant from Ecuador. She came here, settled in, worked hard, and on her own is now helping to send her eldest son to college, someone who wants to become a…
What Would You Sacrifice for Your Art?
Kafka's last known photograph. I have cup that has a quote on it by Franz Kafka. I bought the cup at the Kafka museum in Prague, a pinkish, stucco affair near the Vltava River where Kafka grew up. The museum, like the author himself, is dark inside, with byzantine...
Why People Put up Roadside Memorials
Why People Put up Roadside Memorials A few weeks ago as I was driving I saw a wooden cross along a roadside and it reminded me of the recent death of a friend. It also made me think of the research I did for my novel Resting Places...
Lily Iona MacKenzie interviews Michael C. White
Who are your literary influences or inspiration? Through my undergrad and Ph.D. programs I was influenced, sometime unduly so, by the great American writers in the canon: Melville, Crane, Hemingway, and Faulkner. I especially found myself in the thrall of the two...
To my friend Baron Wormser
Baron Wormser was my friend, colleague, mentor and mentee for over 25 years. We shared much together, enjoyed Maker’s Mark together, exchanged our work, loved to talk late into the night, argued our Red Sox/Yankees rivalry. His death has surprised and saddened us...
Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son”
Mother to Son. Racism is at the heart of my latest novel, Skunktown. Set during the turbulent year 1968, my main character and narrator is 12-year-old Lyman. Lyman, who is white, must unlearn many of the racist attitudes he has been taught growing up, before he can...