Oct 7, 2026
The Many Faces of a Woman in A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. The Problem This Lesson Solves Something I hear a lot from newer writers is: I already described her in Chapter Two, why would I describe her again? as if we meet someone once in life and never have to look at them again. That’s not how we see the people in our lives, and it’s not how the best fiction or memoir works either. A character worth writing is a character who accrues, scene by scene, and who a sharp...
Sep 29, 2026
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice~not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. ~ Opening sentence of Prayer for Owen Meany Spoiler: In this post we will discuss the whole book, including the ending. The Book Everyone Loves, and the Man Nobody Watches A Prayer for Owen Meany was published by William Morrow in March 1989, John...
Apr 28, 2026
🎧 Listen Here What Four Weeks of Close Reading Actually Does For the Writer: Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. We began with that quote and I want to come back to it one more time before we close because that quote is not just about Atticus Finch. It is about every one of us who has spent time inside these two books over the last four weeks. We came in with assumptions, opinions and if we read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school we also came in thinking we knew what it was. Myself...
Apr 21, 2026
🎧 Listen Here Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. ~ Charles Lamb Harper Lee uses this quote at the front of this book for a reason. Not as decoration. Not as a charming literary gesture. But as a thesis. Because To Kill a Mockingbird is not about race in Alabama in the 1930s. That story is present and it is real and must be named. But underneath, running the full length of this novel quietly, is a story about what a man loses when he becomes a man. What gets left behind in the long...
Apr 14, 2026
🎧 Click here Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather, the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; boney mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three...
