J.C. Hallman

Say Anarcha

Say Anarcha

In 1846, a young surgeon, J. Marion Sims (“The Father of Gynecology”), began several years of experimental surgeries on a young enslaved woman known as Anarcha (“The Mother of Gynecology”). This series of procedures—performed without anesthesia—forever altered the path of women’s health. Despite brutal practices […]

Other Writings

Other Writings

Essays, reviews, and interviews

B & Me

B & Me

A funny, frisky often outrageous book about love, literature, and modern life. Nearly twenty- five years ago, Nicholson Baker published U & I, the fretful and handwringing—but also groundbreaking—tale of his literary relationship with John Updike. U and I inspired a whole sub-genre of engaging, entertaining writing about reading […]

Wm & H’ry

Wm & H’ry

The more than eight-hundred letters of the correspondence of William and Henry James span half a century and amount to the most comprehensive exchange in existence among figures of such deep and wide-ranging influence. The correspondence was published in full only in 1994, when […]

The Story About the Story Series

The Story About the Story Series

Writers and critics have always approached writing about reading differently. Most of us are familiar with the latter group: the theoretical critical enterprise that has resulted in the five- paragraph essay with which all high school students are inoculated against the effects of good books. The Story About the Story Series suggests an alternative […]

The Hospital for Bad Poets

The Hospital for Bad Poets

Full of cryptic twists, philosophical quandaries, and fabulist turns, J.C. Hallman’s stories elucidate an intuitive understanding of the human condition. A holiday bete-beche between a bachelor uncle and his synecdochical “family” finds resolution in a nephew’s potent alliance. An alienated young man discovers the meaning of […]

In Utopia

In Utopia

In 2005, J.C. Hallman stumbled across a scientific paper about “Pleistocene Rewilding,” a peculiar proposal to repopulate bereft ecosystems with endangered “megafauna.” The plan sounded utterly utopian, but Hallman liked the idea because he had grown up on a street called Utopia Road […]

The Devil is a Gentleman

The Devil is a Gentleman

J.C. Hallman first read William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience in college. The book’s adventurous spirit and compassionate take on the world of believers returned to him when, on a whim, he visited a UFO group in California, on the occasion of a failed prophecy […]

The Chess Artist

The Chess Artist

J.C. Hallman first met chess master Glenn Umstead in a break room deep in the bowels of an Atlantic City casino. The two became friends, Hallman tagging along as Umstead performed blindfold exhibitions or gave lessons to young students. Umstead was a chess monk, and an odd friendship began to form […]