"What’s your story, kid?"

My father asked me that question every day for 32 years.

I was 16 when mother died, and that was pretty much when we had to start making conversation, just between the two of us. He asked me what my story was every day until he died.
 
Of course his "What’s your story?" was a way for him to get me to tell him what was going on, to keep him posted, to entertain him, and -- most significantly, perhaps -- to get him off the hook from having to say much about himself.

It worked.

When my students or my readers have asked me when and how I started to write, I always explain that it was when I was asked “What’s your story?” I had to come up with an answer.

Everybody has a story; we all have stories, for example, that -- as the English say -- we “dine out on”: the time we got mugged in Palermo and it turned out to be a second-cousin who mugged us, as we discovered later at...

Gene Weingarten and I wrote a book together a couple of years ago called I'm With Stupid: One Man, One Woman, and 10,000 Years of Misunderstandings Between the Sexes Cleared Right Up. It began as a series of columns for The Washington Post and soon took on a life of its own; we did the whole book over e-mail and the phone, not meeting in person until the day the book came out. (Actually, we met for the first time on The Morning Show; it was like an arranged marriage, if the arrangement had been made by Simon and Schuster and available in large print and Spanish editions).

Weingarten and I still do the occasional column together when there are matters of overwhelming urgency.

I felt the marriage proposal offered by Archie to Veronica was one such occasion.

I knew bringing it up with Weingarten would mean trouble, but I didn't know it would lead to my rummaging through old photographs...

As I’ve said before (trust me) lying was the cornerstone, the bedrock, the weaving and shaking but nevertheless enduring foundation upon which the life of my family was built. So I’m not sure I’d want to make an argument against lying, even in creative nonfiction.

I'm teaching a CNF course this semester, and several of the students -- they're a smart bunch -- have already asked how much of their writing has to be "true."

It's a good question and not one that's limited to the classroom.

After all, why settle for fact? Why not make a story out of ordinary, found incidents, the way  some artists make sculptures out of wrecked cars or fabricate fabulous images out of dirt, blood, and rust? Isn’t the most charming person the one who makes you believe you alone are the most interesting person on earth? Does it matter that, strictly speaking, you are about as interesting as bubble wrap? Don’t...

"Can one woman achieve so much and still remain sane?"

The hot new video that my students are showing me features a sexy undulating woman in a cage. She is wearing a flesh-colored body stocking; it looks as if she's naked, except for the black leather belt and requisite black high heels. In this video, particularly during the cage sequence, there is a lot of dyed-blonde hair-flipping. In addition, there is panting and growling.

Fifty years of the women's movement, and this is what we've got: a girl on her belly in a cage in a sort of "Girls Gone Wild" meets "Animal Planet" scenario.

I'm so proud.

It's not that I'm bitter, but doesn't this new video -- the singer is Shakira and the song is "She Wolf" -- remind you of the proposed cover for Smell the Glove, as discussed by the band members of Spinal Tap?

You remember: Fran Drescher is the band's publicist, and she's saying, "You put ...

Ever try to take somebody's last roll of adhesive tape?

Ever ask to borrow the only available marker?

Ever attempt to use a colleague's Post-It notes without written permission?

Ever consider running off with a box of paper?

Of course not; you'd no more walk off with these supplies than you'd purloin someone's purse or burgle a neighbor's house.

Let’s face it: a carjacking would be easier to explain than taking somebody else's podium. In our department, people leave huge signs affixed to the old, chipped, wooden, desktop podiums saying "DO NOT REMOVE THIS FROM ROOM 202 EVER."

I'm not even kidding.

Within any “learning environment,” rich or poor, competition for supplies is fierce. I don't care if you are at UConn (where we run out of paper in the English Department at the end of every fiscal year) or Dartmouth (I remember one of my instructors carrying loose lightbulbs from his apartment...

1) Aside from the obvious (publications, stellar recommendation letters, etc.), what is it about an applicant's file that would make you insist on interviewing him or her?

I think the important word here is “insist” because it is crucial to remember that committees are looking for reasons not to interview candidates. There are so many apparently well-qualified applicants for every position that unless a letter, a dossier, or some kind of other supporting material cries out to a member of the hiring committee, it’s likely that a quiet yet deserving candidate might well be overlooked.

One of the commentators mentioned that he or she looked for letters of recommendation from outside the candidate’s home institution. I also think that’s an excellent marker. Even having letters from someone outside of the candidate’s home department indicates a willingness to look around and to pull...

More advice for those seeking full-time tenure-track positions from distinguished faculty... even if some won't permit me to use their names.

1) Aside from the obvious (publications, stellar recommendation letters, etc.), what is it about an applicant's file that would make you insist on interviewing him or her?

A: Can this person teach the courses we need taught? Does this person's research make me think about something interesting in a new way?

2) What do you consider "important scholarly work" and why? What does it do and how does it do it? Keep your answer to one sentence, please.

A: Important scholarly work makes me think about a significant topic in a new way.

3) How can an applicant make his or her letter not sound like everyone else's but not be disturbingly quirky?

A: Good luck with that. Let me know if you figure it out.

4) What are you REALLY looking for when you...

Ask an academic for advice about the job market, and you’ll get some fascinating responses; colleagues from around the country have been wildly generous in answering my graduate assistant’s questions about how she should best approach her search for a full-time position.

1. Aside from the obvious (publications, stellar recommendation letters, etc.), what is it about an applicant's file that would make you insist on interviewing him or her?

*Superb teaching evaluations

2. What do you consider "important scholarly work" and why? What does it do and how does it do it? Keep your answer to one sentence, please.

*Work that tests and vexes reigning paradigm(s)

3. How can an applicant make his or her letter not sound like everyone else's but not be disturbingly quirky?

*By writing in the kind of iceberg-crisp prose you are likely to find at the start of each week's New Yorker-- sentences of no more...

Five questions Karen wants answered as she goes out on the job market:

1) Aside from the obvious (publications, stellar recommendation letters, etc.), what is it about an applicant's file that would make you insist on interviewing him or her?

2) What do you consider "important scholarly work" and why? What does it do and how does it do it? Keep your answer to one sentence, please.

3) How can an applicant make his or her letter not sound like everyone else's but not be disturbingly quirky?

4) What are you REALLY looking for when you interview someone? I mean, really?

5) Aside from publishing and presenting at conferences, what scholarly activities impress you the most? 

I have my own answers about how an excellent grad student should approach the job market, but Karen would like to hear from you before I blast her with my own blend of nihilism and optimism concerning her grand entrance into ...

I recently learned a lesson about a serious need to shut up. I'm 52 years old and my whole life people who have my best interests at heart have told me not to have a big mouth when it comes to announcing my ambitions, wishes, projects, or loves.

I wish I had listened sooner, better, or at all. I wish, particularly, that I had NOT said anything to anybody about the fact that I am editing a collection titled Make Mine a Double: A Celebration of Women and Drink.

Why do you want everybody to know your business? This is what I grew up hearing from everybody in my Sicilian family in Sheepshead Bay. Maybe it wasn't the absolute finest counsel to give a kid who wants to grow up to be a writer. But after all they didn't know that's what I wanted to do because I actually TOOK their advice-- and from an early age kept my business to myself.

If I revealed my ambitions, it was to a school teacher ...