The Blog

I may be sentimental to an obscene degree, but I think most of us can agree that Susan McCarty’s “Services Pending” from our Fall 2010 issue and Danielle Deulen's “Aperture” from Spring 2011 are two essays that sucker-punch one somewhere under the ribcage and leave—if not full-on tears—at least a pause. It was no surprise to me when Lynne told me Utne Reader had reprinted the former and was also interested in reprinting the latter. I didn’t know what Utne was all about, but I was already convinced of their superior taste.

Then Lynne handed me an issue to look through, and Hugh Hefner gazed back at me and asked the question:  “21^st Century Sex: What are you looking at?”

“I’m not really sure, Hugh,” I said. “But I’m intrigued to find out.”

Reading David Gates led me to take one of his seminars, with the hope—not unusual for a novice writer—that he might impart some secret to his skill. Writing mostly in the first person, Gates's antihero protagonists are rude and disaffected, erudite and funny—not-so-distant relatives, one imagines, of Holden Caulfield. Like that iconic character, they come across as flawed yet likable, or at least sympathetic, revealing sordid aspects of the human condition with brutal honesty and wicked humor. Gates's debut novel, Jernigan (1991), was short listed for the Pulitzer Prize.