Maybe not just an archive after all

So I’ve decided that A Commonplace Blog will not “continue to exist, but as an archive,” despite what I originally wrote below. I find that I have other things to say, about other things than books.

Patrick Kurp is to blame, as usual. The two of us were swapping messages this morning, because Texas A&M University suspended my email account yesterday afternoon without advance warning (after scrubbing me from the English department server last month), and I was feeling sorry for myself. Twenty years I taught at A&M, and the university can’t seem to get rid of my final traces quickly enough. “Write about it, of course,” Kurp said, “and laugh.”

So this is where I will repair to write and laugh. The model will be something like Permanent Morning, where the essayist Walter Kirn is able to write astonishing pieces like this. Perhaps everyone needs a place to reflect upon his experience without self-pity or even without always knowing the right thing to say.