Michael A. Kahn

The 10 Best Lines in Literature: Let the Debate Begin

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Michael Kahn

The editors of The American Scholar–the quarterly publication of the Phi Beta Kappa Society–have published a piece on their website featuring their ten favorite sentences from fiction and nonfiction. Several were familiar, including one each from The Great Gatsby, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A Farewell to Arms, and Pride and Prejudice. My favorite of…

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A Passover Tale: “The Bread of Affliction”

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Michael Kahn

Just in time for Passover, the editors of Kings River Life have published my mystery short story, “The Bread of Affliction.” Originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine back in 1999, it won the Readers Award that year. I hope you enjoy it.

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From Casablanca to True Detective: The Cell Phone Challenge

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Michael Kahn

We Baby Boomer authors came of age before cell phones. In our formative years there were plenty of phone booths for Clark Kent to duck into. But beyond providing a dressing room on every corner for immigrants from the planet Krypton, the lost era of the rotary phone supplied crucial plot points for the dramatic…

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3 Footnotes in a Tub: Score Another for Ecclesiastes

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Michael Kahn

A while back, I wrote a post on the topic of meta-fiction. Specifically, I discussed my naivete as to what I had assumed was the relatively recent vintage of that experimental genre and my subsequent astonishment at discovering that nearly five centuries before our current batch of meta-fiction hipsters Miguel de Cervantes had crafted the…

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Lesser Is Better . . . and Wonderful: Why to Read Why I Read

Posted on February 11, 2014December 29, 2017 by Michael Kahn

If you love to read books, you will love Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books by Wendy Lesser, founder and editor of The Threepenny Review. As the New York Times reviewer wrote, “Wendy Lesser is a serious reader — a quality reader — and this book is a serious pleasure.” Having just finished the book,…

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Let Us Now Praise (In)famous Baz

Posted on January 16, 2014January 16, 2014 by Michael Kahn

Great literature is the third rail of the motion picture industry. The director who attempts to adapt a beloved novel to the big screen invites the slings and arrows of outraged fans. One obvious reason is that the standard length of a motion picture is 100 minutes (or 100 script pages), which means that big chunks…

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The Flinch Factor Named A Favorite Book of 2013

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Michael Kahn

While browsing through a Favorite Books of 2013 list yesterday in search of a new book to read, I was surprised and delighted to discover near the top of that list a book that I not only own, read, and proofread, but also wrote. It was the nicest surprise of 2013. Here’s the link.

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The Joy of Porn Parodies: A Holiday Challenge

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Michael Kahn

When you think porn, I bet the first thing that pops up isn’t the Federal Antidilution Act. It is, however, if your day job is the practice of intellectual property law. Indeed, the intersection of porn, parody, and the First Amendment has inspired a holiday party challenge, described below. But first, a little legal background from your attorney-scribe,…

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An Author’s Fantasy Comes to Life: Barbara Fass Leavy’s Essay

Posted on December 3, 2013December 16, 2013 by Michael Kahn

Every author dreams of being taken seriously. Seriously. And by serious, I mean having one of your works turned into the subject of a scholarly essay. Although my other fantasy–playing third base for the St. Louis Cardinals–has long since been relegated to the Walter Mitty realm, author and retired English professor Barbara Fass Leavy has…

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Indies First Event: This Saturday, November 30

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Michael Kahn

Join me and my fellow authors, including Ridley Pearson and Curtis Sittenfeld, at the wonderful Left Bank Books in the Central West End this Saturday, November 30, for the first ever Indies First Event. It’s happening that day at independent bookstores around the nation. It should be a fun shopping opportunity.

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