Amy Hempel

Recent

On Real

Learned of late that several people — at least three husbands in young marriages, two with young children, everyone in his 20s — had not only never read The Velveteen Rabbit … but hadn’t heard of it. That sorta explains why it’s public domain and I can link to it here. Also explains why when

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Subjective, Objective

The other day I wrote on a wing and a whim … and misremembering. Or as Prufrock put it, quoting Woman —   That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all. Nearly nothing I recalled happened in that way. Except of course the recalling. And a bit more. Wasn’t

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People do the Craziest Things

Adam — did he do what he did for love? Did he say, ‘I will join her; I can’t bear to be without her.’ — is that how it went down? He at after Eve; was it because he’d rather skulk around the earth a sojourner and pilgrim at the mercy of the people in that

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Time, Treasure

Saw an episode ages ago of one of the Twilight Zone reboots which, I’m pretty sure, starred Mark Hamill as this weird kid who collected toys. All this kitschy stuff from the ‘50s and grew up collecting them — and thus stayed weird and for the most part apparently lonely for his life entire. Of course

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Random

Never Ending Story

For the record, such as this is, Breaking Bad won’t end. As the series has continued we’ve become accustomed to Walt doing what he wants. And he certainly doesn’t think a thing’s over until he says it is. The previous episode, ostensibly the second-to-last-ever one, ended with him heading out to take care of business,

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Pumpkin Eater

Alex Rodriguez cheated. Took the easy way. Lied. And if he really does have faith, as he said after the Red Sox game Sunday, he knows he’s right out of Pinocchio. His lawyer, however, appears to have no idea what a gigantic donkey he himself is. To recap — Ryan Dempster missed Rodriguez with his

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What Are The Stories

“What are the stars?” No, not “big balls of gas” — that’s just their form. Just as people aren’t blood and guts so are stars not big balls of gas. What then are the stories?  I started with two divergent thoughts — There is only one plot: things are not what they seem. Jim Thompson and With a

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Business Card

  Live lean. Altar ends. Mercy burns. Pleasantly surprising. Love to the point of folly. Afflictions eclipsed by glory. Write until your fingers break. Everything worth doing hurts like hell. The individual will be thoroughly misunderstood. Write as if you were dying … — that is, after all, the case. Completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in

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