If the takeaway from this essay is that Gone with the Wind lacks the status of an epic romance -- that it is, in fact, nothing but a love story with two rather bratty protagonists -- my wife is not going to be happy with me.

How did such an unpleasant author fashion such a stunning coup? Is it because he isn't as unpleasant as everyone says he is?

A mail-in card in my copy of “Richtofen’s War: The Air War 1914-1918″ reads, “Please send me your colorful brochure describing all Avalon Hill games and Play-by-Mail kits and your exclusive gaming magazine. I swear that I have the necessary grey-matter to enjoy your games.”

The two of them could have had a rousing exchange in the public arena, with Wells combating priggishness and Flanagan pointing out, not inaccurately, that Wells was a pig who elevated his habit of impregnating young virgins by advocating free love. They both take rather a dim view of the most militant women's libbers, Wells because they are sexless vegetarians; Flanagan because they represent to her a self-destructive moral relativism.

I went to the theater with my girlfriend Margie. We bought tickets to see The Firm and sat in the last row making out the whole time. I was trying to do what they say can never be done — go home again or recapture the past.

It occurred to me that the Grand Inquisitor’s interpretation of the Temptation of Christ effectively describes the power I hold over my two sons.

Serial dramas on premium cable might in some ways be able to increase the size of the canvas available to fiction writers, and certainly expand the reach of their work. They might demand more mental work than forms like the sitcom. But a novel like The Corrections can seem limitless to readers precisely because it leaves meanings open, leaves parts of characters’ lives only implicitly explored, allows readers to fill in the blanks.

The Hour of the Star is a book I know I will always return to. I am not sure how many times I have read it. I don’t think I will ever have an answer to the questions posed by Lispector’s final novel, all the more reason to read it again and again.

At times like this, I find myself caught in a dilemma — a feeling I suspect many Middle Eastern women get. On the one hand, I too am enraged and have my feminist blood boil at how cruel certain Middle Eastern practices can be toward women. Yet, on the other hand, I worry about the tendency that people may have of succumbing all too easily to culture blaming, perceiving these practices as abstract and independent of historical and global relations.