A Personal and Political Note

I haven't posted here for a while, given that being a U.S. citizen these days, in the Age of Trump, is akin to having to live with an abusive spouse you can't escape.  (And people in other countries clearly have the same apprehension and fear now dominating the lives of many Americans--for more on that, I recommend this oped from The Observer.) Writing fiction used to offer me a kind of refuge and now that refuge has been breached. Half the time, I feel that writing anything is futile or useless, and the rest of the time I keep thinking that thought-out, serious, analytical, and inspiring writing is more needed than ever. 

Timothy Snyder, a historian at Yale, has written a bracing guide to our times, On Tyranny, that is an example of such writing. An interview with Snyder by Sean Illing is here.