“The Mute World War II Air Man,” Significant Objects, September 2009
“Excerpts from Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,” Western Humanities Review, Summer 2009
“Selections from Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,” The Normal School, Summer 2009
“Autobiography as Criticism, Criticism as Autobiography,” The Iowa Review, Spring 2009
“Excerpts from Reality Hunger,” Fictionaut, April 1, 2009
“Autobio,” The International Literary Quarterly, February 2009
“How We Are in the World,” Brown Alumni Magazine, February 2009
“Perfect Sound Forever,” The Stranger, September 3, 2008
“I Could Go On Like This Forever,” City Arts, June 13, 2008
“Memory,” Columbia, 2008
“Vertigo,” The Stranger, April 15, 2008
“Reality/Memory,” Lake Effect, Spring 2008
“Notes for Eulogy for My Father,” New England Review, Spring 2008
“Reality, Persona,” Truth in Nonfiction, University of Iowa Press, David Lazar, editor, 2008
“Blur,” Fawlt, October 21, 2007
“Excerpts from Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,” Seneca Review, Fall 2007
“The Trouble with Being Food,” Between the Lines, 2007
“Conversations with My Father: A Meditation on Life and Death,” nor, Spring 2007
“DS,” Willow Springs, Spring 2007
“Let Me Tell You What Your Book Is About,” Northwest Edge, Summer 2006
“The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead,” Conjunctions, Spring 2006
“Spider’s Stratagem,” Iowa Review, Spring 2006
“Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,” The Believer, March 2006
“There’s Only One Rule: Never Be Boring,” Rules of Thumb, F & W Publications, 2006
“Death Is the Mother of Beauty,” Black Ice, December 2005
“Three Essays,” Conjunctions, Fall 2005
“Boys’ Bodies,” Conjunctions, Spring 2004
“Myths of Place”, Zisk, Fall 2004
“Ye Olde Mind-Body Problem”, Seattle Research Institute Bookmark Series, June 1, 2004
“Why Not Go Pro?”, The New York Times, May 6 2004 (reprinted in Long Beach Press-Telegram, May 7, 2004)
“A Life in Words”, Pacific Northwest, March 28, 2003
“The Wound and the Bow”, The Believer, December 2003
“Gaddis”, Conjunctions, Fall 2003
“Bring the Pain”, Zisk Magazine, Fall 2003 (reprinted in Elysian Fields Winter 2004)
“Retrofeminist of the Night”, The New York Times Magazine, November 2, 2003
“Men and Games and Guns”, Yale Review, July 2003
“Words Can't Begin to Describe What I'm Feeling”, Verbatim: The Language Quarterly, Spring 2003.
“Notes on the Local Swimming Hole”, Columbia, Spring 2003 (reissued in Seattle Research Institute bookmark series, June 1, 2004.)
“Matsui Among the Americans”, Playboy Japan, May 2003. (reprinted as “The Anti-Ichiro”, Slate, March 31, 2003)
“Welcome to America”, The Stranger, January 9, 2003.
“Charles Barkley’s Head Fake”, Slate, November 22, 2002. (reprinted as "I Sing the Body Athletic" in Amazon, May 8 2004 and Haiduts.net, May 26, 2004)
“36 Tattoos”, Village Voice, October 16, 2002.
“Is This Heaven? No, It’s A Sports Movie”, ESPN.com, August 26, 2002.
“Everything I Know I’ve Learned from My Bad Back”, SpineLine, May/June 2002 (reprinted in Utne Reader, September 2004)
“These Days, I Want to Keep It Real”, San Francisco Chronicle, May 19, 2002.
“Adventures in Autobiography”, Amazon, May 8, 2002.
“The Lure of the Real in Today'sCulture”, Seattle Times, April 9, 2002 (reprinted in mobylives.com, April 9, 2002).
“The Capitalist Communitarian”, The New York Times Magazine, March 24, 2002.
“Foreign Guys Can Shoot”, The New York Times Magazine, March 3, 2002.
“Letter to J.D. Salinger”, contribution to Letters to J.D. Salinger, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
“The Two Faces of Ichiro”, Weekly Gendai, Japan, January 19, 2002,
“The Only Solution to the Soul is the Senses: A Meditation on Bill Murray and Myself”, Tin House, Fall 2001.
“Being Ichiro”, The New York Times Magazine, September 16, 2001 (reprinted in Tri-City Herald, September 16,2001, and Japanese Playboy, January 2002).
“Baseball Is Just Baseball”, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, August 10, 2001.
“The Same Air”, Fourth Genre, Spring 2001.
“Confession Begets Connection: Details of One Life Resonate with Another”, “Writers on Writing” series, The New York Times, April 9, 2001 (reprinted in Writers on Writing , Volume II, Holt, 2003)
“Satire”, “Doubt”, “S&M”, Western Humanities Review, Spring 2001.
“Life & Art”, Post Road, #2, Spring 2001; reprinted in “Life & Art”, To Father: what I've Never Said, Story Line Press, 2001
“Properties of Language”, Yale Review, July 2001.
“The Same Air”, Fourth Genre, Spring 2001.
“Rebecca's Journal”, Quarterly West, Fall 2000.
“Bob Knight, C'est Moi”, Salon, September 27, 2000.
“Secret Spaces of Childhood”, Michigan Quarterly Review, Summer 2000.
“The View: A Diptych”, “Properties of Language”, Northwest Edge, Summer 2000.
“The Guilty Pleasures of Seattle”, Salon, June 1, 2000.
“The Good Father”, The New York Times Magazine, April 23, 2000.
“The Problem”, Seneca Review, Spring 2000.
“Race to the Basket”, Amazon.com, January 6, 2000.
“Story of Our Lives”, Threepenny Review, Winter 2000.
“Taboo Topics, True Subjects”, Austin Chronicle, November 19, 1999.
“Just Win, Baby”, The New York Times Magazine, October 31, 1999.
“Recollection”, The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers' Workshop (Hyperion, 1999).
“Fifteen Ways of Looking at Vince Carter”, Saturday Night, March 2000; reprinted as “Vince Carter as African-American” in Taking Sport Seriously: Social Issues in Canadian Sport (Thompson Educational Publishing), 2000.
“Victory Video”, Another Chicago Magazine, #35, 1999.
“Gary and Me”, Seattle Weekly, October 7, 1999.
“On Views and Viewing”, McSweeney's, Spring 1999.
“The Two Best Buildings in Iowa City”, from Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, 1999.
“A Preview of Coming Attractions”, Web del Sol, Spring 1999; reprinted in Brevity, Spring 1999, and 5_Trope, Summer 1999.
“Rhetorical Questions”, Last Tangos, #1, 1998.
“Loud Sound”, Asha, Summer 1998.
“Video Store”, Chicago Digital Cafe, March 24, 1998.
“The Heroic Mode”, Seneca Review, Volume 27, #2, 1997.
“It”, Bricolage, Issue 14, 1997.
“Are You Who I Think I Am?”, Details, February 1997.
“Top Ten Albums”, Soma, January/February 1997.
“The Presidency”, 4D Books, October 1996.
“Stuttering”, “Almost Famous”, Third Coast, Summer/Fall 1996.
“Pop-Up Culture”, Brown Alumni Magazine, July 1996.
“Problems and Solutions to Problems”, “The Subject at the Vanishing Point”, “The Cultural Contradictions of Late Capitalism”, “The Cultural Contradictions of Early Capitalism: Postcards from Camp”, Bellingham Review, Vol. 19, #1, Spring 1996.
“Sugar, My Sugar”, The New York Times Magazine, March 10, 1996.
“If the Lyrics Are Sad”, Harper's, Volume 292, #1749, February 1996.
“Discerning the Forest in the Literary Trees”, Boston Globe, June 17, 1995.
“Almost Famous”, San Francisco Review of Books, Volume 20, #1, March/April 1995.
“Why We Live at the Movies”, Fathoms, 1995.
“Optical Illusions”, Vogue, April 1995; reprinted as “Girls Who Wear Glasses” in Best , American Erotica 1996, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1996.
“Payton Love”, Seattle Weekly, April 12, 1995.
“Act and Shadow”, Seattle Weekly, January 25, 1995.
“Always”, Seattle Weekly, October 5, 1994.
“Life Is Elsewhere”, Witness, Volume 8, #2, 1994.
“How to Make a Paper Hat”, Paragraph, Fall 1994.
“Trial by Fury”, Writing on the Edge, Volume 6, #1, Fall 1994.
“Loud Sound”, essay in Infant Tongues: The Voice of the Child in Literature, Wayne State University Press, 1994.
“Almost Famous”, Witness, Volume VIII, Number 1, 1994.
“Why We Live at the Movies”, Rotund World, #2, 1994; reprinted in Utne Reader, #165, September/October 1994.
“Stuttering”, Verbatim, Volume XX, #4, Spring 1994.
“Sports”, Open City, #2, 1993; reprinted as “Sports Complex” in Harper's, Volume 288, #1727, April 1994.
“Information Sickness”, Zyzzyva, Volume IX, #1, Spring 1993; reprinted in Harper's, Volume 286, #1717, June 1993, and in Utne Reader, #62, March/April 1994.
“Air Time”, Paragraph, Winter/Spring 1993.
“Eight Essays”, Witness, Volume VII, #2, 1993.
“Desire”, The Threepenny Review, #53, Spring 1993; reprinted as “In the Film Womb” in Utne Reader, #59, September/October 1993, and as “Desire” in In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal, W.W. Norton, 1999.
“Literary Pointillism”, American Notes and Queries, Volume 5, #4, October 1992.
“Living in the World”, Pequod, #34, 1992.
“The Tradition Is Here, The Memories Are Waiting: Six Sporting Events in Search of a Sponsor”, The Stranger, Volume I, #37, June 29, 1992; reprinted as “The Tradition Is Here, The Memories Are Waiting: Several Sporting Events in Search of A Sponsor”, Witness, Volume I, #2, 1992.
“The Nimbus of His Fame Made A Nullity of Us All”, Ergo, 1992.
“Where We Lived and What We Lived For”, The Stranger, January 12, 1992.
“Life Story”, The Stranger, Volume I, #12, December 15, 1991; reprinted as “Life Stories”, #51, Utne Reader, May/June 1992.
“Horizontal Hold”, Seattle Weekly, June 5, 1991.
“Tube Test”, Seattle Times, May 21, 1991.
“Acting Native”, Seattle Weekly, April 17, 1991.
“The Big Board”, The Village Voice, July 10, 1990.
“Tabloid TV Goes to Twin Peaks”, Seattle Weekly, May 23, 1990.
“Wish You Were Here”, contributor to article, Alaska Airlines magazine, March 1990.
“Oprah and the KING People”, Seattle Weekly, November 22, 1989.
“Father's Day”, The Village Voice, July 25, 1989; “Stories on Stage” theatrical production of story, Chicago, 1996.
“Autobiographic Rapture and Fictive Irony in Nabokov's Speak, Memory and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, The Iowa Review, Volume 17, #1, Winter 1987.
“A Note on the Conclusion of 'The Dead,'” James Joyce Quarterly, Volume 22, #4, Summer 1985.