I haven’t written in what seems like ages, and I don’t have time right now. I’m presenting at a conference in a few minutes, my first professional work since Peanut was born and I abandoned graduate work to raise him.

My questions for you are as follows:

When did reader response come back as a valid form of literary criticism? Why do film studies dudes get away with that?

When you’re in the movie theater, the sound of shoes suction cupping their way across the floor raises my hackles because it makes me think of the sticky, nasty, sugary spill through which they are walking. So why, at the end of naptime as I’m drawing my paper to a lovely conclusion, is that same sound, this time of little feet in grippy-soled socks walking across the hardwood floors to my room, the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard?