After a violent conflict with his father, Martin Guerre, sixteenth-century Gascon peasant of Basque origin, leaves behind his young wife, Bertrande, and infant son. Eight years later, Martin Guerre returns. The man claiming to be Martin knows everyone in the village. He possesses memories of intimate details. This Martin is Read more
Fayettenam [now to be called Disequilibria: Meditations on Missingness] focuses intermittently on the 1982 disappearance of my stepfather, James Edward Lewis, a Vietnam veteran. Earlier this month, nearly forty years on, we attended a memorial service for my stepfather. My brother Kevin worked hard for several years, finally reaching the Read more
A fact or a theory that takes its meanings from a particular discipline interests me in the ways it might be useful outside that discipline. How might a biologist’s ideas about morphology transfer to literary form? Do literary texts have feedback loops, like thermostats or software? From architecture, Christopher Alexander Read more
In February 2023 my hybrid memoir, “Fayettenam: Meditations on Missingness,” will be published by the University of New Mexico Press. In this blog, I plan to write through, around, under, and over the book I have written. What will appear between covers, after all, is a coalescence: years of writing, Read more