"Sometimes the best moments in human relationships are the ones in which we have the self-restraint to say nothing at all, to demonstrate our love and our joy instead of trying to break down the experience and reshape it into words. This is the genius of dogs, one of the many geniuses of dogs—they have the nonverbal-expression thing down cold. And if we're reading too much into everything they're not saying, then so be it. They'll forgive us. They always do."
—Ann Patchett, from the foreword to Dog Joy
Published Wednesday, 10 March 2010
An author on book tour encounters his public
Greil Marcus turns his eye toward the music of Van Morrison
An aspiring author heads to Killer Nashville, a conference designed to help unpublished writers land a book contract
Elizabeth Spencer, one of the South's greatest writers, discusses her work, her years in Tennessee, and her friendship with Eudora Welty