THE YEAR OF FOG received an “A” today from the Washington Post in the Media Mix feature, its bite-sized listing of upcoming books and movies. It’s been a long time since I’ve been graded. I remember something about getting a B in graduate school in a class where all we had to do was watch movies. And slipping through a college algebra course at the University of Alabama, circa 1989, in a late-in-the-semester plea to the professor, who, upon hearing that I’d put all my eggs in the English and creative writing baskets and hadn’t much of a head for math, promised to pass me if I could name the author of For Whom the Bell Tolls on the spot. I did. That was my last math course, ever. From the Washington Post:

Richmond makes the reader feel the gamut of emotions, from the initial disbelief and blind hope to the nagging guilt and gnawing despair.

The exercise: Write about getting your way out of a fix by questionable means.