I'm back from the Pacific Northwest, and more important, I think my brain is finally in the same time zone as my body. I've never been one of those people who claimed to be immune to jet lag--in an era when I was less, um, together, the only time I wasn't late to work was in the immediate aftermath of international travel--but it's way worse these days. It's partly age, but I think it's mostly the enshittification of air travel. With sad resignation, I've realized I need to stop buying the cheapest possible plane ticket if I want to be present for the first few days of a trip, not to mention the immediate aftermath of getting home. Waah!

Still, the trip was definitely worth a few days of messed-up sleep. I got to hang out with some new friends and some very old ones. I spent more time in cars in those two weeks than I have in the last three years. (Thanks for all the rides!) I got a tiny insight into how things work at a large-ish state university. (I spoke at one class where we donned wireless mics and strode around while talking with the students.) I got to visit some really great bookstores--special shoutout to Smith Family Bookstore in Eugene. The two where I spoke--Up Up Books in Portland, Oregon, and Charlie's Queer Books in Seattle--were awesome. And I was so happy to see the Outlaws & Outliers exhibition at the Oregon Jewish Museum.

Lots of people came out, even in Seattle, even though the Mariners were playing in the elimination game of the American League Championship Series--as close as the team has ever been to the World Series--while I was talking. Honestly, though, I'm not sure I could've handled more people from my past at the Seattle event. There were folks from my days at Seal Press (original recipe), Encarta, early Slate (and someone from current Slate), vanpool, and a few I know from even earlier. As with last summer in New York and DC, it's slightly maddening to get to see people you haven't hung out with in years (some I hadn't seen in decades) but also not have a chance for a proper catchup. I also met lots of people for the first time, including some subscribers to this newsletter, which was wild.

After all that running around, I'm appreciating a quiet November where I get to spend a lot of time at my desk. I'm still working my way through the scans I took at the UVA special collections reading room, along with a few more I grabbed from the University of Oregon's special collections. I'm excited to get going on what I think of as the next phase: interviews. I've already heard some fabulous insights. The kind that make you double-check that you remembered to hit Record.

We're shifting into the dark days of winter here, and I'm really not mad. I'm still in my favorite part of the writing process--research--so it's not like I'm resisting the desk, but it doesn't hurt that the outside world is serving cold, dark, and wet most of the time.

RECOMMENDATIONS: I started to listen to the audiobook version of Emily Van Duyne's Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation on a bit of a whim, after hearing the author talking about the book on a podcast hosted by still another Plath biographer. This is the third Plath biography I've read this year alone--and I've read Heather Clark's Plath biography Red Comet twice since it was published in 2020! In other words, I need no convincing that Plath was interesting, but I wasn't sure there was much more to say about her. ERROR! Despite a title I don't love, this book is fabulous--a tiny tidge more academic than I would prefer (academics gonna academic, right?), but among other things, she points out how many biographers have completely ignored the indisputable evidence that there was intimate partner violence in Plath's relationship with Ted Hughes--and in other Hughes relationships--which is the best possible answer to the question I admit I too have asked, "Does the world need another biography of Sylvia Plath?" It apparently does, and this is a great one.