Derek Neal lives in Hamilton, Ontario where he teaches English to international students as part of the English Language Development program at McMaster University. Prior to this he lived in Italy, France, and Montreal, where he also taught English in various capacities. He holds a B.A. in both English and French from the University of Vermont and wrote his honors thesis on Albert Camus (Grace, Play, and the Body in the Writings of Albert Camus). His other writing is available on Substack: https://derekneal.substack.com/ Email: drock1237 [at] gmail.com
by Derek Neal I’ve recently started playing pickup basketball again. When I was younger, I played basketball all the time. At two or three years old, we had a toy hoop with a bright orange rim, white backboard, blue pole, and black base. It was, I believe, a “Little Tikes” brand hoop; I’ve just looked…
by Derek Neal There is a scene near the end of First Reformed, the 2017 film directed by Paul Schrader, where the pastor of a successful megachurch says to the pastor of a small, sparsely attended church: You’re always in the Garden. Jesus wasn’t always in the Garden, on his knees, sweating drops of blood.…
by Derek Neal An essay about Stoicism appeared on this website about a month ago. The essay was critical, seeing Stoicism and its contemporary manifestation as a sort of individualistic therapy that excluded the possibility of political and collective action. Instead of attempting to improve society or grapple with its problems, the turn to Stoicism,…
by Derek Neal In the first round of this year’s NBA playoffs, Austin Reaves, an undrafted and little-known guard who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers, held the ball outside the three-point line. With under two minutes remaining, the score stood at 118-112 in the Lakers’ favor against the Memphis Grizzlies. Lebron James waited for…
by Derek Neal At some point in the last couple of months, my reading about ChatGPT reached critical mass. Or, I thought it had. Try as I might, I couldn’t escape the little guy; everywhere I turned there was talk of ChatGPT—what it meant for the student essay, how it could be used in business,…
by Derek Neal According to my father, David Mamet once said that his scripts are about “men in confined space.” I have been unable to verify this quote, but if you look on the internet, there’s an awful lot of writing about Mamet and “confined space.” In particular, I suspect the origin of this apocryphal…
by Derek Neal A few months ago, I wrote about Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Spring and how his focus in this book is the examination of two worlds: the physical world that exists apart from us (the outside world), and the world of meaning and significance that is overlaid on top of this world through language…
by Derek Neal If Joan Didion were alive today, she might write an essay about Prince Harry and include it in an updated version of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. She might write a passage like the one she wrote about Howard Hughes: That we have made a hero of Howard Hughes tells us something interesting about…
by Derek Neal In 1965, John McPhee wrote an article for The New Yorker titled “A Sense of Where You Are.” The piece profiles the basketball player Bill Bradley, at the time a member of the Princeton basketball team. The subtitle of the essay is the question: What makes a truly great basketball player? McPhee…
by Derek Neal I write this essay as much for myself as for the reader. It is my conviction that one writes to find out what one thinks, not to put down fully formed thoughts that are floating inside one’s head. Some sort of alchemy occurs when I put pen to paper, or in this…
by Derek Neal The one regret of my life so far is never having seen Roger Federer play tennis in person. As Federer announced his retirement this year, I’ll never have the chance. The closest I came was the summer of 2017: I was in Italy and planned on flying to Stuttgart to see Federer…
by Derek Neal There are certain words that seem to take on a life of their own, words that spread imperceptibly, like a virus, replicating below the level of consciousness, latent in our environment and culture, until suddenly the word is everywhere, and we are afflicted with it. We may even use these words ourselves:…
by Derek Neal Friday, September 2, 3:24 pm I’m in a white Toyota Camry, practically brand new, and I’ve passed a spotted deer grazing outside the airport and a billboard with a picture of a baby and the words, “God doesn’t make mistakes.” Wyoming, I think to myself. The GPS on my phone tells me…
by Derek Neal Going back and reading one’s favorite authors is like seeing an old friend after a long absence: things fall into place, you remember why it is you get along with and like the other person, and their idiosyncrasies and unique character reappear and interact with your own, making old patterns reemerge and…
by Derek Neal “Paradiso” by Erlend Oye is a song I’ve heard many times in many different settings. This is largely a result of circumstance: it is one of the few songs I keep on my iPhone, and I return to it when I’m driving and my phone doesn’t have cellular service. Once upon…
by Derek Neal In last month’s column, I wrote about the opening pages of Philip Roth’s Nemesis, and how Roth creates the backdrop of 1940’s Newark upon which the events of the novel play out. I’m using the words “backdrop” and “play out” intentionally, as these pages really do function as a sort of stage…
by Derek Neal I recently read Philip Roth’s Nemesis, a novel that’s received renewed attention as it centers on a polio epidemic. This isn’t why I read it, although I’ll admit that reading about the slow build and then cascading avalanche of a virus, and the public’s nonchalance giving way to caution and then increased…
by Derek Neal I’m not sure anyone has ever figured out how to write about music. This is a dangerous statement to make, and I’m sure readers will be quick to point out writers who have been able to capture something as intangible as sound via the written word. This would be a happy result…
by Derek Neal The character of the American abroad is an archetype in American fiction. By placing the American outside of his native country (usually in Europe), writers such as Henry James and James Baldwin were able to explore what constitutes American identity. More often than not, this identity is revealed in their novels not…
by Derek Neal We have many choices when deciding what to eat. For most of human history, however, there has likely been little to no choice at all: people ate what was available to them or what their culture led them to eat. Now things are not so simple. As I mentioned in Part 1,…