An essay of mine about the legendary indie rock musician and poet David Berman (of Silver Jews fame) was recently included in a terrific new cluster of essays devoted to Berman’s work at “Post45 Contemporaries.”

In my essay, I wrote about Berman’s mixed feelings about his own incredible gift for creating pithy, memorable phrases: “He was strangely good at crafting aphorisms, he knew it, and that fact made him sick. How could someone so distrustful of truth claims be so good at dispensing truth claims?”

The whole set of essays, edited by Sarah Osment and David Hering, is wonderful, and I’m very happy to have my piece appear in such fine company. There’s an extra bonus, too — the musician Bob Nastanovich, a member of both Pavement and Silver Jews and dear friend of Berman’s, contributed a touching afterword to the collection. (I’m not sure what my 20-something self would’ve thought about having something he wrote in the same collection with one of the guys from Pavement, but I think he would’ve been surprised and delighted).