Am I a bird? Montgomery News asks, while talking Dr. Radway and Handling the Truth

I was feeling particularly inept and incapable today—doing countless things of indeterminate value (save for the thirty minutes I spent reading James Wood and thinking about literary mimicry) and wondering whether I'd ever feel literary again. (Such wondering has become a running motif.)



Then Nicolette Milholin, the Book Bound Columnist for Montgomery News, sent me a story she had written about me and a few recent books. I read the first paragraph and burst out laughing, and then I had this thought: If I do nothing else today, I will have laughed.



Which counts for a lot of something.



So thank you so much Nicolette. Here's that first graf, below. And here's a link to the whole.

Say you want to be a writer, a published author, an acclaimed figure who
just can’t help letting those words flow, a writer so prolific that
your email signature rightly boasts “author of 16 books.” Where do you
turn for guidance and inspiration? It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Beth
Kephart!