Dear All of You,
Please stop that.
Yours sincerely,
The Rest of Us
Open Letter to People Writing Open Letters
Recent
Coyotes and Christians
I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,
And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’
Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that
What I Recalled Watching Netflix
[Television is educational.] One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain
Seeking the King
A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do
Random
Being That Guy
Once after one of my MFA professors had said the work we were reading was neither good nor original, the student who’d produced the pages wailed, But … but this actually happened! So what? He said. * I think François Truffaut said everyone in fiction is crazy, and the problem is to render this craziness
Metered Sins
Poetry’s a sneaky bastard. All the time sidling up to one on false pretenses — ‘It’s just the one’ … ‘We won’t intrude’ — and they’re all lies damn one’s eyes! Lies-damned-lies and no need for statistics and the pile of warm laundry does not diminish and soon loses its warmth and begins to glower
Duo
… More then says because he’s in prison and only has a coal with which to write he can’t respond fully to the view that one ought harm an evil man lest he cause even greater harm to such as are innocent and good. But He counsels us that even if it be our formal office to punish an evil
Talks With A Duck
Obscured in the kerfuffle over Mr. Robertson’s coarser comments on the Fairer Sex is a simple fact that any five-year-old can tell us: Adults say the darnedest things. This has since been confirmed by the comments of many other adults, critiquing the original notes on the female form offered by the “Duck Dynasty” patriarch — responses
Related
All You Can Eat Adultery
I get all the adultery I want. It’s true. Ask Michele. Thing is, I don’t want any. You may have guessed this, but others may have thought Wha — ? Aye, and there is the (naked back) rub. I don’t want any adultery because I love my wife. This is true, and it’s the main,
Metered Sins
Poetry’s a sneaky bastard. All the time sidling up to one on false pretenses — ‘It’s just the one’ … ‘We won’t intrude’ — and they’re all lies damn one’s eyes! Lies-damned-lies and no need for statistics and the pile of warm laundry does not diminish and soon loses its warmth and begins to glower
Plough Lines
“For sale: baby shoes” is a classified ad. “For sale: baby shoes; never worn” is a story. It’s Hemingway’s, in fact. * “The king is dead” is a news bulletin. “The king died, and the queen died of grief” is a story. Better yet, “The king died, and the queen and her lover died in
Dirty Rotten Scoundrel
Some of my best friends have a problem with the dirty poor. These are the folks below the dirt-poor — which describes a financial level not the person himself. These are the dirt-encrusted, unemployed, possibly begging (relying on strangers, kindness, and a fair economy as much as the rest of us, anyway), frequently transient (the weather