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A Writer’s Diary
A Day in the Life of a Book Critic
What Dylan Thomas can — and can’t — teach us about life
Saturday, Dec. 18, 2021
8 a.m. Awake to an alarming text from a member of a short story discussion group I co-lead for journalists and authors on Zoom. It says that one of the three downloaded stories we’re reading this month — emailed to members weeks ago — is “full of typos and bad grammar and missing words.” God bless the internet. The meeting is tomorrow.
By now everyone should have read the story — actually, an excerpt from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn called “A Brooklyn Christmas” — and the member can’t find a clean copy online. The other two stories we’re doing, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” and “Reginald’s Christmas Revel,” look fine.
Am about to leave to shop for holiday groceries with a friend but begin a vigorous online search for a version of “A Brooklyn Christmas” that at least spells the main character’s name correctly. Find one in 10 minutes and send it by blast email to our group.
9:30 a.m. Joyous news in the car on the way to Publix. “Did you hear that a judge just threw out the settlement in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case?” asks the driver, who knows I’ve followed the saga closely as a book critic. I let out a yelp of…
