Nicholson Baker

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,

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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

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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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Random

Forget What?

Today is the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Poking around, I found this short item, from the Fictional Newswire New York (FN) — Eleven years after the World Trade Center attacks here in September 2001, most haven’t forgotten … they just don’t know why they were supposed to remember. “Uh, I’m pretty

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Trick Shot

Sometimes successful films — ones that aren’t expected to be, by many excellent people — spawn copycats, a fact as well-known as well-attested. The followers aren’t as awesome as the originals but they’re not always so awful, and the makers, if they care a little, will throw some new stuff in, or at least get people

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Whither Tebow?

So the question now is whether the future holds a place for Tim Tebow in the NFL. Well my goodness they didn’t think he belonged there before Peyton Manning signed with the Broncos … so who cares what they say now? When he was succeeding, they said he shouldn’t be. He just shouldn’t. Why not?

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All Things Considered

This could go a couple different ways. An image likes could be Veteran’s Day, it’s not, or Memorial Day which, though closer, it’s not. Could be about a song (actually a poem) I found only a few months ago or an automatically somber meditation on mortality that’s begun before you’ve even begun to read …

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