Wednesday 4/8/26 Most people are horrible people. It's almost impossible--because it takes too much character, and most humans possess little to no character--to have money, power, fame, and not be worse than someone would be without those things. I'm unchangeable in these regards, but as these pages make plain, I'm not like anyone else. I answer to different things. And I also want different things. People will try to get away with whatever they're allowed to get away with.

Monday 4/6/26 The Red Sox lost another yesterday to fall to 2-7. Ranger Suarez was poor again. I'm seeing a guy who doesn't have much. His pitches are waiting to be crushed if they aren't right where they need to be. The only reason the Sox were ever in the game--and had a rare lead at that--is because Walker Buehler was doing his best to take care of his old friends in the Red Sox' dugout. The Sox stand at five games out. They're already in real trouble. You might have a dis

Sunday 4/5/26 To a friend's daughter but relevant to all, I think. Dear (), It is your friend Colin in Boston again. I was thinking about you this morning because it’s Easter. I like Easter because it’s the holiday that reminds us we can rise again. That’s not a religion thing or a God thing. It’s a person thing. The thing about rising up is that it’s not something we should stop doing. Rising doesn’t mean, “Oh, I’m here now, time to take a load off, that’s done.” You

Sunday 4/5/26 The Red Sox dropped another one yesterday after winning their home opener the day before. so their record now stands at 2-6. The biggest issue is the offense. The pitching has been okay-ish overall. Sonny Gray went six on Friday, surrendering two earned runs, but that's misleading, as the hometown scorer apparently decided to hold those woeful error totals right where they are for the Sox defenders and ask the pitchers to pay the price for a bit. Rafaela dropped

Thursday 4/2/26 As it says. *** Yesterday's paragraph actually changed some. The two versions side by side make for an interesting comparison in the choices in which one would be able to note, "Oh, I see why he did that, wow," when such a thing would not have been envisionable upon seeing the earlier example. The new version features in yesterday's Granta prose off, but, again, I still need to go over the entry and will send it along here after I do. I'm working fairly hard

Thursday 4/2/26 Over the weekend the past weekend I was engaged in research for two nonfiction books: one on extended musical residencies that document changes in American musical history, and the other on the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star," a vehicle representing the art that means more to me than any art that isn't my own, which is saying much, given what art obviously means to me. To say it's my life isn't to say nearly enough. Anyway, a section about the American musical res

Wednesday 4/1/26 The Red Sox dropped their fifth game in a row today to the Houston Astros. The season is six games old and this team owns a five-game losing streak. They have struck out thirty-eight times in the last three games. The catcher was pulled out of the line-up shortly before the game started and it wasn't because of health. Oh. That's a wonderful sign. Can someone tell me how this hitting coach--who, apparently, presides over a large staff of hitting coaches with

Wednesday 4/1/26 It takes so few words of mine to establish that this writer is infinitely better than any of these writers. That is the word--"infinitely." It's not "exponentially," because there is no way to measure or quantify how much better the one writer is than these favored people of the system of incestuous evil that is beloved and enabled by the likes of Granta publisher, billionaire heiress, and shamer of those who cause her family to hide their dead body, Sigrid

Wednesday 4/1/26 I've shown more quit than fight of late--by my standards--so am trying to force myself to redress and reverse that, because I'm in trouble if this is the case and have even less of a chance with everything (or anything) than the total absence of so much as a scintilla of chance that may always be my reality in this world, which one can say doesn't make sense because zero is zero, but which one perhaps wouldn't say even if one was living through this worse-tha

Wednesday 4/1/26 Five games into the season, the 2026 Boston Red Sox had already had a long losing streak than the 2013 and 2018 Boston Red Sox did in the entirety of their seasons. The Red Sox look terrible, and though people will say, "Relax! It's early!" the truth about baseball is that there is no early, just as late comes very late. The pitching has been horrendous. The offense non-existent. This team strikes out like it takes pride in this being the thing it's most prol

Thursday 3/26/26 Need to crank it today. Things to write and send off. Finished a 1000 word piece about the 1961 film The Pit and the Pendulum yesterday. One thing my horror film book aims to do is be a kind of critical reclamation project for a number of directors like Jack Arnold, Edgar G. Ulmer, Terence Fisher, Roy William Neil, and Terence Fisher. I'm adding John Brahm to that list. Rewatching The Undying Monster this morning, so I'll write on that and also have things

Wednesday 3/25/26 I'm putting this here because it amuses me. It's just a text exchange with a guy I know--the man who is the father of the girl I wrote those letters to who is going through some stuff. Today they were at the ER because in addition to that stuff, she has been having these nosebleeds that won't stop. I was working when I got a text from this guy and they were waiting, so I figured I would try and lighten her mood a little and make her smile. When her father an

Wednesday 3/25/26 Also from today. I am writing well. And remember: These people who go first in the prose can only do their bad version of fiction. There's no, "Okay, time to write my brilliant film piece, then my brilliant music piece, then my brilliant sports piece, then my brilliant op-ed, then my brilliant art piece." It's just the one sliver of the one thing, done the same every time, and poorly at that. Always the same. But not this. And not this guy. Edgar Allan Poe w

Wednesday 3/25/26 Ring the bell, it's prose off time! Ding ding ding!!! And in this corner... ...we have David Szalay. He was shortlisted for the Booker Prize--which is one of the biggest deals in the world in publishing, in case you don't know, like the Pulitzer, never mind that even rage-drunk (at the minimum) Mark Warren landed one of those, albeit not for fiction, like those geniuses Junot Diaz and Joshua Cohen --back in 2016, and won the Booker Prize for fiction in 202

Wednesday 3/25/26 Yesterday I signed off on two short stories, "The Sighs Have It" and "Oh No Not That" as complete. Both very short word count-wise. I described them as "starters" to a few people I sent them to, but they're good. And starters in the restaurant sense in terms of what's coming. One of those stories that's coming, or has come, is "Open or Closed," done as of this morning unless I go back and alter it, which I don't envision doing. Also not long word count-wise,

Monday 3/23/26 I'm intrigued by players who have led the league in runs batted in and batting average in the same season but not home runs. It's an unlikely feat and has happened rarely throughout the game's history. I've been thinking of players who did it off the top of my head. Stan Musial, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb did it a bunch, Cap Anson, Todd Helton, Jimmie Foxx, Nap Lajoie, Honus Wagner, Tommy Davis. There are probably others. Don Mattingly is guy who would seem like a

Sunday 3/22/26 I have about a dozen nonfiction pieces to write in quick succession and then I can get back to fiction and book things. To paraphrase the Rolling Stones via Mississippi Fred McDowell and Sam Cooke, gotta move. Op-eds, film pieces, and three music pieces on Jerry Lee Lewis's live albums from 1964, the Byrds' Turn! Turn! Turn! LP, and the song, "I Think We're Alone Now." Located a rare 1968 live version from Tommy James and Shondelles. This is for starters. New

Monday 3/23/26 I've been lacking on the fitness front and for this I am sorry which I can say because I will do better. Ran five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument on Wednesday and Thursday with the accompanying 100 push-ups and three miles walked each of those days. No stairs on Friday or Saturday but the same amount of push-ups and I walked six miles Friday and nine Saturday. I was actually waiting in line at the Monument on Saturday but there were also all thes

Sunday 3/22/26 M.R. James loved the ghost stories of Sheridan Le Fanu like I love the ghost stories of M.R. James, even if James did overrate Le Fanu. In his essay about ghost story writers and what, in his estimation, makes for a good ghost story, James's prose practically burbles in with excitement as pertains Le Fanu's writings, which is rare for James. M.R. James set most of "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" in the fictional coastal town of Burnstow, and then se

Saturday 3/21/26 There was a liar, fraud, and bigot at The New Yorker named David S. Wallace, with the title of fiction coordinator, which, as someone said to me years ago, is pretty funny. Sounds like something out of Orwell or Kafka, but also juvenile. You know how you know when someone's lying to you? I mean, you know when you know, right? Think of all the times in your life when you knew someone was lying to you. There were other times you didn't, but the times you knew,

Friday 3/20/26 Yesterday we had an expansive prose off entry here in which myriad related things were discussed, but this is going to be a minimalist one. Jess Row is among the chosen people of literary class system. He has no ability, the same as all of these people, which takes no time at all to prove. Everything by someone like this is the same. It will be about them, lightly fictionalized. And it's often about writers. Stories about writers. Referencing other writers. Be

Thursday 3/19/26 As one may recall, I recently likened Wendy "The Bag of Hag" Lesser, editor of The Threepenny Review , dug-in classist, unstable, cowardly bully, impressively droning, pretentious, boring writer (maybe we should start pitting some of these people against each other in Boring Offs?), Guggenheim winner (of course), bigot, hooker upper of the "right" kind of people, to the embittered human version of projectile vomit , which I feel confident in saying is the mos

Wednesday 3/18/26 I spent the other night in the company of Bertram and Wooster. Wodehouse is skilled at what he does. My issue with it, as such, is that it only goes so far. His writing is entertaining, but I wouldn't call it great art. I think of it like the comedic analogue to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. There are parameters in place. Art, in my view, must put you position to experience and feel like you are witnessing what I look at as the answer

Wednesday 3/18/26 Let's look at a paragraph, shall we? A paragraph of sheer power and beauty. One that uses words we all know. Words a three-year-old knows. Words we use all the time. But there is no one who would use those words--put those words together--as I have in said paragraph. I've been working a lot on a story called "Still Good" for There Is No Doubt: Story Girls , my book in which all of the stories are about women or girls, and would have to be. That is, you could