Bobbie Ann Mason grew "so sick of reading about the alienated hero of superior sensibility" who so frequently dominates twentieth-century American literature that she decided to write fiction about the antithesis. Her characters are ordinary, working-cla...

Bobbie Ann Mason grew "so sick of reading about the alienated hero of superior sensibility" who so frequently dominates twentieth-century American literature that she decided to write fiction about the antithesis. Her characters are ordinary, working-cla...

"'Born to Run' ... that's my whole history, and my whole psychology, and all my subject matter. I grew up 150-200 miles from any city. You simply didn't have much connection with the outside world. So my dreams were always to get out."1 Bobbie Ann Mason...

There was an elephant in the room during all the years of my childhood and youth, but it was an elephant I somehow never saw. Something told me I must not notice it, much less speak of it. This metaphorical elephant was the...

Byline: JAMES E. PERSON JR. WILLIAM STYRON A Life JAMES L. W. WEST III Random House. 506 pp. $30. Author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) and Sophie's Choice (1979), William Styron is at once...

Questions: 1) The number one predictor of divorce is: a) Ongoing disagreement over money and financial issues. b) The habitual avoidance of conflict. c) Yelling and screaming during fights. 2) Couples that “go the distance”—whose marriages are successful—have fewer disagreements about the three core issues:...

 Not so long ago, what happened behind closed doors in the White House was nobody’s business. Some of the most celebrated presidents in U.S. history—Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy—enjoyed a little action on the side without having to worry about paparazzi hiding...