Yiddish Wisdom: Just a Forshpayz

Posted on by Michael Kahn
As you may have noticed, many authors place a special quotation on the page before the first chapter of their novel. For example, Harper Lee opened To Kill a Mockingbird with the following quote from Charles Lamb: “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.” Ernest Hemingway opened The Sun Also Rises with this quote from Gertrude…
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The Gourmet Club: The First Review

Posted on by Michael Kahn
As my fellow authors can firm, nothing triggers that spike in blood pressure and heartbeat more than that email from your publisher sending you a link to the very first review of your new book. You take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and nervously click on the link. You read the opening sentence, hoping it…
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Legal Thrillers for Literary Snobs

Posted on by Michael Kahn
I was talking with a friend about the unfortunate tendency of readers, critics, and publishers to shoehorn every work of fiction into a specific genre, be it romance or science fiction or mystery or historical fiction–as can be confirmed by a stroll through your local bookstore, where the aisles are labeled by the genre they…
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Great Closers of Fiction

Posted on by Michael Kahn
While the Internet teems with posts listing the best opening lines in all of literature, I have learned over years of reading and writing novels that a great opening line is nevertheless overshadowed by the importance of a great closing line. Yes, a great opening line will lure the reader into the novel. But even…
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In Praise of Awe

Posted on by Michael Kahn
It took one of my children, back when he was no more than two or three years old, to teach me the profound truth in that famous line from “My Heart Leaps Up,” William Wordsworth’s poem celebrating the joys of nature: “The Child is father of the Man.” If you want to experience genuine awe,…
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Hoosier Redux: The Hazards of Legal Jargon, i.e., Ipse Dixit

Posted on by Michael Kahn
A short while ago I wrote a blog piece on the strange world of city-specific jargon, inspired by a popular coffee-and-dessert restaurant in Evanston, Illinois, whose name featured a word–HOOSIER–that has a far different (and derogatory) meaning to those of us from St. Louis. (Ironically, although I also mentioned a few classic Boston-specific terms. I…
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“Hoosier” Is in the Eyes of the Beholder

Posted on by Michael Kahn
Strolling down Chicago Avenue south of Main Street in Evanston, I paused in front of Hoosier Mama Pie Company, a beloved local spot for coffee and pastries. But as I gazed up at that sign, I had to smile at how the unique St. Louis definition of “hoosier” would undermine–indeed, torpedo–the cleverness of that name….
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