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January 28, 2020
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A blog about the New York literary life by Phillip Lopate, celebrated essayist, director of Columbia University’s nonfiction program, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay, and author of Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body, and To Show and to Tell, among other books.

Previous posts

Tennis, Anyone?

Tennis, Anyone?

Obsession and regression

by Phillip Lopate | Friday, June 30, 2017
Memories of Jazz Nights

Memories of Jazz Nights

You needed stamina, but the payoff was great

by Phillip Lopate | Friday, June 23, 2017
Valentines Past

Valentines Past

If only I’d had the nerve …

by Phillip Lopate | Friday, June 16, 2017
On the Death of Friendship

On the Death of Friendship

Nothing lasts forever

by Phillip Lopate | Friday, June 02, 2017
On Keeping a Blog

On Keeping a Blog

A Farewell

by Phillip Lopate | Friday, May 26, 2017
A Visit to Harvard

A Visit to Harvard

And a surprise encounter with Dr. Johnson

by Phillip Lopate | Friday, May 19, 2017
Remembering Cynthia Macdonald

Remembering Cynthia Macdonald

Poet, teacher, opera singer, psychoanalyst, and friend

by Phillip Lopate | Thursday, May 11, 2017
Marrying a Widow

Marrying a Widow

Or, my spectral predecessor

by Phillip Lopate | Friday, May 05, 2017
Baldwin the Prophet vs. Baldwin the Writer

Baldwin the Prophet vs. Baldwin the Writer

Can a film really capture the essence of both?

by Phillip Lopate | Friday, April 28, 2017
Listening to Dinah

Listening to Dinah

The complexity of “Don’t Explain”

by Phillip Lopate | Friday, April 21, 2017
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THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

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Shock Waves

by Our Editors

In the wake of Iranian airstrikes on Al Asad Air Base, the Defense Department is examining service members for traumatic stress injuries. President Trump this week dismissed the soldiers’ possible concussion symptoms as “headaches,” adding that he doesn’t “consider them very serious injuries, relative to other injuries that I’ve seen.” But as Bethany Vaccaro discovered after her brother Robert left for Iraq in 2006, “giving one’s life can come in more than one form.” Her essay in our summer 2009 issue explores the aftermath of Robert’s traumatic brain injury, both for him and for their family, after an explosive detonated outside his Army Humvee. His injury “defines our daily existence,” writes Vaccaro. “The ongoing process of rehabilitation … has tenaciously enmeshed each one of us, altering our plans, our family structure and interactions, our ideas about life and sacrifice, and most resolutely our belief that if he would only make it back home, everything would be okay.”