In contrast to England, half of whose literature seems to revolve around houses and estates, houses and estates being ready extensions of character, America has always found more value in the act of leaving one...

Disconnecting from one’s community is a personal choice, of course, but it ends up having social implications [“The Basement,” The Awl, Feb 5, 2015].

when people stopped having enough money to make long distance calls, or the energy and time to write, they disappeared [“The Basement,” The Awl, Feb 5, 2015].

a library shaped by the aspirations and concerns of people who came of age in the late sixties [the collected works of Thoreau, Lopez, Abbey, Ginsberg, Snyder, Kerouac, the entirety of the Foxfire series as...