British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) was a complicated man, like many poets. But unlike most of them these days, he was politically of the right, at least in some respects. Larkin wrote in forms, which is inherently conservative. But his … Continue reading →
Joyce Maynard has made a kind of cottage industry out of her long-ago relationship with J.D. Salinger, who seduced her when she was a wunderkind of 18 and he a famous writer of 53 and then abruptly threw her out, … Continue reading →
Is Obama really going to attack Assad’s regime in Syria, or is he just talking? And if he does attack, how far will he go, and what is his ultimate goal? There’s no dearth of speculation on all those questions. … Continue reading →
The poet Yeats often wrote about how dreadful old age was, especially its physical manifestations. In the poem “Among School Children“, he describes himself as having looked pretty nifty in youth and terrible at sixty: And I though never of … Continue reading →
…to remind me of the Flying Dutchman. Or Philip Nolan, The Man Without a Country:
Continue reading →America has been so fortunate, and in many ways so outside of history’s darker corridors, that we have forgotten what we should have known, and neglected to teach it to our children. It’s like a population (think Native Americans before … Continue reading →
Oh, I was a strange, strange child. And not the least of my strangenesses was that I loved the stories of Philip K. Dick. That was odd in several ways. First of all, it was odd because I was a … Continue reading →
I confess I haven’t yet read Helen Smith’s book Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters, but it sounds fascinating. I’m quite familiar with Helen Smith’s work in general … Continue reading →
Funny stuff here: Dear NSA, …If you have any pull with the American Psychiatric Association, could you please recommend to them that the psychological state formerly known as “paranoia” should be no longer defined as a mental illness? Asylums all … Continue reading →
…to read the classics: … George Orwell’s “1984” is enjoying a surge in popularity, landing at No. 4 on Amazon’s list of “Movers and Shakers.” Sales of Orwell’s classic have risen an astonishing 5,771% as of Tuesday morning, with a … Continue reading →
Today is the 64th anniversary of the publication of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and with all the news that’s been occurring in the last few weeks (up to and including today), somehow it seems apropos. We are not (yet) in the … Continue reading →
As a blogger, I tend to immerse myself in the news. Lately there’s been so very much of it, and so much to think about, that I find myself neglecting some of the other parts of my life. But yesterday … Continue reading →