Don Quixote – Michael A. Kahn

From Sancho Panza to Saul Goodman: More Thoughts on the Cage-Free Character

Posted on January 12, 2020January 30, 2020 by Michael Kahn

As many of my readers know, I am a big fan of what I have named the Cage-Free Character. Those fictional free-range characters occupy a special place in my library, my own novels, and my heart. What exactly is a Cage-Free Character? He or she typically starts off as a minor character in a novel…

+

Most Important Books of All Time? Let the Debate Begin!

Posted on February 26, 2019February 26, 2019 by Michael Kahn

Last summer I wrote a post about a cool web page that had created road maps for your favorite road-trip novels, from Jack Kerouac’s cross-country trip in On the Road to The Cruise of the Rolling Junk, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description of the journey he took with his wife Zelda from Connecticut to Alabama in…

+

A Truly Challenging Question for Me (and You)

Posted on August 1, 2017February 16, 2019 by Michael Kahn

I received an email from the folks at Goodreads asking for me to answer the following question: “If you could travel to any fictional book world, where would you go and what would you do there?” What a great question! And one you should ask yourself as well. Here’s how I answered it: I started…

+

Bromance: My Favorite Fictional Couple

Posted on February 10, 2017February 10, 2017 by Michael Kahn

I recently received a question on the Goodreads website asking who was my favorite fictional couple, and why. My first reaction was to flip through all of the literary lovers I’d encountered over the years–a list that includes: Romeo & Juliet; Elizabeth Bennett & Mr. Darcy; Lancelot & Guinevere; Odysseus & Penelope; Scarlett O’Hara &…

+

A Fun Conversation with Author Jonathan Watkins

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Michael Kahn

We authors are accustomed to being the interviewees, i.e., the ones giving the answers to the questions. Thus it was a pleasure to settle down with fellow attorney-author Jonathan Watkins and finally get to ask some of the questions I’ve often wished an interviewer would ask me. And it was even more of a pleasure to…

+

In Praise of Cage-Free Characters

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Michael Kahn

The good folks at the Writers & Authors blog asked for some of my thoughts and advice on writing. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the joys of what I call the cage-free characters. Think of them as the fictional version of free-range chickens. For readers, the cage-free character is the minor character who…

+

The Coolest Book of All Time

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Michael Kahn

We live in the Age of Listicles: “The 10 Best [fill in the blank]” and”The 8 Reasons to [fill in the blank]” and “The 12 Secrets to [fill in the blank]” and, of course, those two old chestnuts of the Internet, “The 10 Sex Positions You Must Try Before You Die!” and “8 Surefire Weight-Loss…

+

3 Footnotes in a Tub: Score Another for Ecclesiastes

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Michael Kahn

A while back, I wrote a post on the topic of meta-fiction. Specifically, I discussed my naivete as to what I had assumed was the relatively recent vintage of that experimental genre and my subsequent astonishment at discovering that nearly five centuries before our current batch of meta-fiction hipsters Miguel de Cervantes had crafted the…

+

Sex, Metafiction, and Ecclesiastes

Posted on March 16, 2013February 10, 2014 by Michael Kahn

Yes, I know. A curious title. Bear with me. First, the sex. Many years ago, I read a magazine piece by a literary figure who’d come of age in the Greenwich Village of the 1920s. Among her fond memories of that era, she wrote, was the pride that she and her friends took in their…

+