Inanimate objects attack me. Doors, tables, chairs, toilet seats, vacuum cleaners, keys, wallets, tools, cars, and computers - to name just a few of my enemies - have it out for me. They sneak up on ...

Early in “The Book of Form and Emptiness,” Ruth Ozeki’s heady new novel, an off-course bird bangs into a classroom window: “THWACK!” The middle schoolers are stunned. One is particularly upset. Benny ...

To be an inanimate object must be, I fancy, a very uninteresting affair. Certainly, being one appears to have a disastrous effect upon the disposition. No one who has had any intercourse with ...