Different cars, different worlds
I’ve got a new post up at PJ’s Lifestyle section. The topic: driving the Model T versus driving the cars of today. Not about politics at all. Okay, maybe just a little.
Continue reading →Category Archives: Literature and writing
An American Bride in Kabul
Phyllis Chesler’s new book, An American Bride in Kabul, is described and recommended by John Hinderaker at Powerline. Sounds interesting. Nothing like personal experience to drive a point home.
Continue reading →Things in heaven and earth
Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Case in point, the rainbow … Continue reading →
Poets of the right
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 →
The continuing saga of Maynard vs. Salinger
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 →
Why attack Syria?
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 →
So Yeats, what were you bellyaching about?
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 →
Snowden is starting…
…to remind me of the Flying Dutchman. Or Philip Nolan, The Man Without a Country:
Continue reading →History and immunity
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 →
Philip K. Dick and me
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 →
Helen Smith: on men saying “no thanks” to marriage
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 →
Zombie emails the NSA with a polite request
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 →