It’s called 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, and it’s been #1 for much of the time since it was released on January 23, 2018. As I write this it has over 600 customer reviews and, astoundingly, almost … Continue reading →
The difference between these two speeches is abundantly clear: Trump offered bleakness, hostility, bigotry, and division. Kennedy offered hope, honesty, integrity, and unity.#SOTU — Charlotte Clymer???? (@cmclymer) January 31, 2018 Made me think of the first paragraph of Hans Christian … Continue reading →
Ever since I first saw the play “Noises Off” on Broadway around 1984 I’ve been deeply impressed by Michael Frayn, its author. I’d read about the play before I attended it. It was said to be very funny and very … Continue reading →
Margaret Atwood, feminist icon, has gotten into trouble. It’s part of what I’ve come to see as a generational war between certain older feminists who still hold to quaint old-fashioned notions such as due process, and certain younger ones who … Continue reading →
There are walls, and then there are walls. Robert Frost wrote: Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass … Continue reading →
Robert Louis Stevenson is one of those writers I connect with childhood, where he loomed large. A Child’s Garden of Verses and Treasure Island, of course (which I now see were published in the same year), and then the Strange … Continue reading →
Yesterday I called former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok a “vast and beckoning mystery.” That, he remains. But today I’ll offer a few thoughts about him nevertheless, based on what we do know (or think we know). Some of this … Continue reading →
Yesterday’s post on stage musicals vs. movie musicals led somehow to me watching video after video on YouTube with great pleasure, and one of the greatest of those pleasures was to learn that Patricia Morison is still alive and kicking … Continue reading →
Larry Tribe, Harvard law professor, made a very weird (or is it wierd?) suggestion on Twitter: Trump [had] tweeted: The Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, … Continue reading →
A while back we had a discussion of popular and/or highly-thought-of books of the past that we’ve never heard of, and that don’t seem all that great if we try to tackle them now. Well, I recently came across The … Continue reading →
Joyce Carol Oates has been writing short stories and novels ever since the early 1960s. As a writer, she reminds me of Meryl Streep as an actress—that is, skillful, highly praised, prolific, versatile, and not especially appealing (to me, anyway). … Continue reading →
I’ve already said that I wasn’t going to watch Ken Burns’ documentary on Vietnam, and why. But of course lots of other people have watched it. Here’s a report from Powerline’s Scott Johnson: Watching the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary history … Continue reading →