December 2010
38 posts
1 tag
On Hearing the Airlines Will Use a Psychological...
They will catch me as sure as the check-out girls in every Woolworths have caught me, the badge of my imagined theft shining in their eyes.
I will be approaching the ticket counter and knowing myself, myselves, will effect the nonchalance of a baron. That is what they’ll be looking for.
I’ll say “Certainly is nice that the airlines are taking these precautions,” and the...
November 2010
38 posts
1 tag
Bonnie Jo Campbell and the Strategy of Negation
“The Solutions to Ben’s Problem” is structured unlike any other story I’ve read. The problem, which is never directly articulated, is that Ben’s wife Connie is a meth addict who can’t moderate her increasingly dangerous behavior. To make matters worse, Connie is the mother of Ben’s baby, and Ben fears losing the baby one way or the other (to Connie’s neglect, to child protective services.) The...
I've Inherited a Tragedy: Witness Protection →
kevinlongrie:
In Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, the wise traveler Raphael Hythloday recounts a conversation he had with Cardinal Morton and a few other guests about the state of affairs in England. At length, they discuss the punishment for simple thieving¹, which is death. After a lawyer makes a poor…
Witnesseth: Parallels are well drawn between Sir Thomas More and Louie C.K., with a footnote...
1 tag
“And besides waterfowl, there was a great store of wild turkeys, of which they...”
– William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation
You know you're an English major when:
thatssubjective:
you’ve rolled a joint out of a page from a Norton anthology.
We are shocked, shocked.
2 tags
Forms of Love
I love you but I’m married.
I love you but I wish you had more hair.
I love you more.
I love you more like a friend.
I love you your friends more than you.
I love how when we go into a mall and classical muzak is playing you can always name the composer.
I love you, but one or both of us is/are fictional.
I love you but “I” am an unstable signifer.
I love you saying,...
1 tag
“She was of the stuff of which great men’s mothers are made. She was...”
– Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
2 tags
2 tags
E.O. Wilson at the Miami Book Fair
Miami-Dade chemistry teacher Shawn Beightol was there. Here is a note he wrote to his students about Wilson’s talk:
Well, it wasn’t physics. It wasn’t chemistry. It wasn’t action packed.
But it was powerful.
Approximately 10 students and parents showed up to wait in line with about 500 other people to hear E.O. Wilson. Maybe it was just for extra credit. But I know if...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/books/review/Meac... →
The Wisdom books force readers to face uncomfortable truths. “There is no remembrance of the first things nor of the last things that will be,” says Ecclesiastes. In a footnote, Alter observes: “This is a radical and deeply disturbing idea for the Hebrew imagination, which, on the evidence of many earlier texts, sets such great store in leaving a remembrance, and envisages the wiping out of...
Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of...
2 tags
1 tag
“The future was the tiny spray you feel on your face when you peel an orange, a...”
– Sarah Braunstein, from The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (Feb. 2011).
1 tag
Dickie
Everyone in town went to the same gynecologist, Dickie. Even Dickie’s sister went to Dickie. No one thought this was strange except for the out-of-towners.
-Minter Krotzer, from Hint Fiction
1 tag
Why I Don't Keep A Daily Planner
Written on his calendar on the day of my father’s death, these words: Call son.
-Stace Budzko, from Hint Fiction
“Just as the arts were reinvented in the age of the camera, so too must they be...”
1 tag
“If fetish and nostalgia often make for vulgarity in LA, they also make for...”
– Jan Morris, The World
WatchDear Miss Manners:
I hope you will give me the answer to a problem that confronts me every now and then: Two people (a male and a female) walk toward each other on a sidewalk. As they pass each other, should each step to the right, even though the curbside is on the female’s right, or should the male step to the curbside and the female to the inside, even though the inside is to...
1 tag
Soul
An oil-blacked sea bird swabbed
with towels, dropper- fed with a liquid
charcoal-glucose mix, rightened, sized,
fattened on sprats, then rinsed in a pail
of soapy water and released back
into the wild.
Sherrod Santos, from The Intricated Soul
1 tag
“I urge that soldiers should not have to bear the moral burdens of war on their...”
– Nancy Sherman, The Untold War: Inside The Hearts, Minds, And Souls Of Our Soldiers
1 tag
2 tags
1 tag
wow →
The Tumblrverse gives it up for Nicole Krauss
1 tag
The Sheikh Says...
The Sheikh ordered me to repent, to abstain from singing or flirting with Laila or Kalvadara
Most respected Sheikh! Is there a divine text justifying seeing my reason gone or behaving like a silly ass?
Arrar, From Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes From The Modern Middle East
1 tag
“At the age of thirty Kate Swift was not known in Winesburg as a pretty woman....”
– Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
1 tag
Say Goodbye To The Wind
One drawback of bio-fabrics is their extreme sensitivity. Bred originally from the gene stocks of delicate wisterias and mimosas, the woven yarns have brought with them something of the vine’s remarkable response to atmosphere and touch. The sudden movement of someone near by, let alone of the wearer, brings an immediate response from the nerve-like tissues. A dress can change its colour and...
1 tag
“The truth wouldn’t have mattered. They had each done what was necessary to...”
– Don Lee, Yellow
2 tags
Happy Guy Fawkes' Day
Macduff
What three things does drink especially provoke?
The Porter
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes: it provokes desire but it takesaway the performance. Therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him and mars him; it sets him on and takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him, makes him stand and...
Progress and Poverty (1879)
The evils arising from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, grow greater and greater, until they sweep us back into barbarism by the road...
1 tag
Andrew Jackson, Veto of The Bank Bill (1832)
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the act of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy and virtue, every man is equally...
1 tag
Resolutions On The Intolerable Acts
That those pimps and parasites who dared to advise their master to such detestable measures be held in utter abhorrence by us and every American, and their names loaded with the curses of all succeeding generations.
That we scorn the chains of slavery; we despise every attempt to rivet them upon us; we are the sons of freedom and resolved that, till time shall be no more, godlike virtue shall...
