Today, I began reading The Sound and the Fury. Most Americans have read this novel in high school or college, but I can safely say most Dutch have not. Our education on English literature was extremely English, meaning: it focused on writing from Great Britain…

They’ve named a hurricane after me, my husband says and he sounds proud. It was only a tropical storm this morning, he adds, but I’m sure it’s a hurricane now. We Google his atmospheric namesake and learn that tropical storm…

According to certain people in my life, I don’t exploit my feminine charm as much as I should. I guess I’m just one of these women who prefer being appreciated for other qualities, etcetera. But I must admit that on…

I’m re-reading Don Delillo’s Underworld. The first time I read it, I was twenty-two. I liked it yet thought it was overabundantly American. I still think that, but now I also think it’s a masterpiece I can never live without. The…

I dreamed I was living in a dystopian world in which culture had become suspicious and men were not allowed to read anything unless it was written by a woman. I recently re-devoured Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Often, my dreams…

We arrived by elevator on a moon-shy night. Two pretty boys in ripped and burned-out T-shirts led us into an anteroom where a doctor was sliding on medical mittens. She was tugging at the latex with her teeth. We were…