Bedside reading pile is wildly out of control.

It's hard to overstate the impact Taylor had as an AIDS fundraiser. $100 million is an estimate that doesn't include nine-figure bequests to AIDS charities.

Mark Guiducci has so much to answer for — even beyond Nuzzi — and he's, what ... three months into the job?

Just finished “True Nature - The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen”, by @lancerichardson.bsky.social A very fine work, an emblem of literary biography. A great gift to any avid reader about American letters.

“The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 50,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an interactive experience so people around the world can experience the beauty of the Quilt and witness the love and stories stitched into each panel.”

I am 170 pages from the end of Mason & Dixon, and I have had my fill and then some, but I will finish this book goddamnit.

"So what are you working on next?" — this question is like nails on a chalkboard, particularly when asked at a launch event for one's current book.

We watched “A House Full of Dynamite” this past weekend, and honestly the scariest thing about it was imagining Hegseth and Trump in the situation depicted.

"Even-handed, perceptive, smoothly narrated and exhaustively researched. . . . Richardson is very good on the limits of Matthiessen's vision, the romantic fog on his lens."

One of the greatest to ever do it.

Well, I think it is the most satisfying biography that I have read in recent years @lancerichardson.bsky.social For anyone interested in travel writing, nature writing, or the history of American letters.

You just know that this is because Trump and his minions associates AIDS with the gays.

Six books I read and really loved this year: "Question 7," by Richard Flanagan "How to End a Story," by Helen Garner "Recognizing the Stranger," by Isabella Hammad "Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife," by Francesca Wade "A Return to Self," by Aatish Taseer "Shadow Ticket," by Thomas Pynchon

I think Pecan Pie is one of those things that is divisive now because it’s just a blob of sugar with nuts on it but to someone 150 years ago who ate shoes it was probably like having 12 orgasms at once

Reposting this for absolutely no reason this morning.

I will absolutely leverage my book's presence on any "best of 2025" round-up list, because it is tough to get attention in this culture and you do what you must — but I also think these lists are pretty much meaningless as measures of artistic quality.

Home from book tour, and an absolute husk. You will find me on my couch until 2026.

Agreed.

fyi: @lancerichardson.bsky.social (via @semprephi.bsky.social)

Extraordinary essay. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

This was a lot of fun.

"Matthiessen’s many masks are on display in True Nature, a deeply researched and artfully executed biography. ... Mr. Richardson has drawn from an enormous range of sources ... to better understand a gifted, difficult man who, for all his adventures and good fortune, seemed resolutely dissatisfied."

"True Nature" on the Washington Post list of notable nonfiction books in 2025.

Fascinating essay on Pynchon, with who I am currently, if belatedly, obsessed, after having read Shadow Ticket a few months ago. (Currently 450 pages into Mason & Dixon, a book this turns out to be simultaneously hypnotic, profound, incomprehensible, and tedious.) www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

"Franz Kafka once called his writing a form of prayer. He also reprimanded the long-suffering Felice Bauer in a letter: 'I did not say that writing ought to make everything clearer, but instead makes everything worse; what I said was that writing makes everything clearer and worse.'" —Joy Williams

"things happen"

Trump, the President of the United States, called a woman "piggy." That is where we are.

"When an off-camera female reporter... began to ask if there was anything 'incriminating' in the Epstein emails, Trump pointed a finger in her face. 'Quiet. Quiet, Piggy,' he said menacingly." Tell me again how it's women who are ruining the workplace? people.com/donald-trump...

My reaction to the endless Nuzzi/Lizza saga is not disgust so much as exhausted resignation. Many of us work *so damn hard* as writers, maintaining scrupulous ethics, and yet *these* people are the ones who get all the breaks. I read Nuzzi’s extract, or Lizza’s Substack, and think: Why do we bother?

I finished reading this book last week and I still find myself thinking about parts of it every day. It’s quite simply one of the best biographies I’ve ever read, about one of the most fascinating writers of the 20th century. Hats off to @lancerichardson.bsky.social for this Herculean achievement.

Join Village Books for a talk with @lancerichardson.bsky.social on TRUE NATURE: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen! An evening of wild places, literary lives and stories that change you. 📍 Bellingham, WA 🗓 Nov 18 from 6pm to 7pm PST 🔗 RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/lance-rich...

Deeply annoying to be misquoted in a New Yorker letters page letter, and then scolded based on the misquote. I never said that!

Gosh. "A magnificent literary biography, painstakingly researched, intricately organized, and beautifully written, fully worthy of its sensitive, restless, and driven subject. ... It should be of interest to anyone drawn to the search for our true nature and the deepest truths of the human heart."

Excited to finally visit @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social for myself tomorrow; and I’ll be speaking about my book with Chris Jennings.

A giant tidal wave could be rushing around the globe, destroying all life on earth, but if you put Robyn on I would feel like everything was fine for the duration of the song. This is wonderful.

"In True Nature, Lance Richardson offers vivid summaries of Matthiessen’s far-flung adventures. . . . [W]ell written, diligent in its reading of both fiction and nonfiction, and indulgent of Matthiessen’s idiosyncrasies."

Denver food tips? Here for a night.

What really happened with the CIA and the Paris Review? Had a long chat with Dan Piepenbring for the magazine.

Happy pub day to @sarahweinman.com and her deeply important book Without Consent www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/b...

So excited to read this book. And published by my beloved Pantheon.

10, 20, 30% is not "a reasonable chance." It is idiocy.

So my partner has gone unpaid for weeks on a government furlough, forcing us to dip heavily into savings, for absolutely no reason. It was all for nothing. Every single one of these Democrats needs to go.

Hard to think of anything in media that regularly brings me as much pure joy anymore as the headline in The New York Times' Trilobites section.

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

"'True Nature' is beautifully written, generous, but also uncompromising, and Richardson handles the complexities with insight and grace."

take all my money deadline.com/2025/11/miss...

So thrilled for Helen Garner winning the Baillie Gifford Prize today. Her diaries are *stunning.* I said as much in the Washington Post back in April.

I miss living in New York so much.

[Exit Clown.]