Interactive English

In a world devoid of rites of passage, Ezra Buckley finds himself confronted with the genuine prospect of having a life-changing, liminal experience in the woods of Big Sur. What is it that he experiences? Is it the legendary Watchers of Big Sur phenomenon or something else? Will he survive it? Is it even real? Xen is a work that confronts the questions of identity, modernity, life, the other, and the place for rites of passage in the modern world.

In this essay collection, Michael Cohen presents the odd idea of the suicide note as a writing project that can be critiqued like any other, describes encounters with illegal border crossers in South Texas, and ponders the sudden popularity of books about atheism. Books are a frequent subject here, and Cohen makes an argument for The Maltese Falcon as the Great American Novel, searches for the perfect, the Platonic, nature handbook, and compares playing golf to reading about it.