Amy Hempel

Recent

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

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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

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He’s the Guy

Those social media posts of ‘this moment in this famous film was totally unscripted!!!’ as if that by itself makes it better miss the point. Moat unscripted material, like most ideas, inventions, ideas, notions, &c … fails — such is the nature of creativity: the best stuff, it is devoutly to be wished, sticks around;

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‘Round Here

Imagine someone, potentially anyone, even you, perhaps, but let us, in any case, say. Yes, you. You pull into the diner – Earl’s, Norm’s, Dinah’s, something like that. A sort-of Googie architecture … but maybe not quite, as if it’d been a little late for the Space Age, and late is the one thing you

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Random

I’ve Said Too Much

There’s a danger of saying too much. There’s always that. I wrote previously and succinctly about stories. Here’s a longer exploration I’ve been working on, off and on, for about a year. * Every true story starts with realizing something is out of place and involves people asking who they are in a world where things (they now see)

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Semi Stuff

Here’s a way to say it — I pay attention, I notice things, I remember, I make connections; my mind moves fast — and long, on the connections. Draw the well deep, carry far the water. [The semi-colon technically ‘replaces’ the period but artfully between the two a difference wd be how a semi-colon can

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Columbo: Why We Watch

This is part one of a two-part post on why, some 45 years later, we still watch Columbo. Part two is here. This essay is excerpted from The Columbo Case Files: Season One, found here. Thank you. * For my wedding, I asked for and received the Columbo DVD collection. Complete to that point, it ended

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Who They Are

The poet felt injustice in calling it Fancy Ketchup. The priest said the most grievous sins can be forgiven. * The priest wondered if anyone changed. The poet said he’d seen it often, depending on who was paying. * The poet would punish evil by making them hated by all. The priest would in having

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