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The Plume and the Alibi

An answer to Caroline Fraser, whose book Murderland argues that lead and arsenic from the smelters of the Pacific Northwest helped produce the serial killers of the 1970s and 1980s. A reader sent me a fragment of an interview with you. You are asking why the Pacific Northwest produced so many serial killers, and you have arrived at smelters, at lead, and at a pair of graphs that lie on top of each other. You won a Pulitzer for Prairie Fires and you do not deserve a lazy reply, so here is the long one. One half of what you are saying is sound. The other half is rotten, and the rot is spreading into the half that deserves to survive.

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The Titular, Circular, Cyclical and the Forlorn: Rescuing Robert Frost from Himself

Robert Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry.  He was an earthy icon and, in some eyes, an American shame, for the man could love only himself and not his children or his wife. I’m not sure if that’s a crime against himself, or his promises, but there is no denying the man was an original and he knew how to write and he knew what he was.

Marred by the mistake of genius, Robert Frost cared only for his poetry, and his legacy, and that’s why the new fascination with protecting Frost’s legacy on the page is so intriguing.

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Curse, of, the, Common, Comma

Do, you, like, to, use, commas, as, if, they, are, running, out, of, style? I don’t like commas and I avoid them.

My students, on the other hand, as well as many amateur authors, use commas as if they were free by the bushelful and need to be crammed into every bramble and sigh. I never add a comma before an “and” though many people employ a comma there.

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