True West and Buried Child, plays by Sam Shepard, for essentially a do-over of a class I took twelve years ago. True West is very funny now and wasn't then, plus it includes my second-favorite-ever stage direction, "The set should be constructed realistically [...] If a stylistic 'concept' is grafted onto the set design it will only serve to confuse the evolution of the characters' situation, which is the most important focus of the play. Likewise the costumes should be exactly representative of who the characters are and not added onto for the sake of making a point to the audience." Take that, graduate students!

Buried Child is still completely perplexing but at least I get now that you can't look away, and it features my very favorite stage direction, "Sound of bottles smashing against wall. This should be actual smashing of bottles and not tape sound." Take that, stage managers!

Lost Boy Lost Girl, adult fiction by Peter Straub, who fascinates me now for exactly the reason I once dismissed him, namely his cowriting projects with Stephen King. The crafting is very fine -- better than King, maybe even, for tightly controlled structure and natural dramatics -- and yet at the end I felt a little like I'd been walked in an extraordinarily precise and tidy circle and ended back where I'd begun.

Interestingly-to-me, now that I'm writing a little again myself, I feel suddenly deauthorized in these dismissive microevaluations, though I press on. Know that I know that I can no more make 1% of any of this myself than I can grow the trees and pulp them and brew the ink and build the presses and generate the electricity and bind the books themselves.

I've drafted an essay about teaching; if you want it, email my real-life address.