Getting It Wrong Again
It was an astonishing moment for me, who never felt settled in what he knew.
Arts & Letters
Duluth, Minnesota, and the Liberation of Lo-fi Travel
When contemplating travel, we cannot help but think big: London, Paris, or—why not?—even flights to Australia and New Zealand lasting more than a whole day’s time. It is those magical interstices just within reach we tend to forget, the local gems just across the way that, once taken in, might blow our minds in ways so subtle we do not at first recognize them.
Why Humans Shun the Humanities
History grows us up. And literature? It complicates the world for us. This is why we must kill the humanities.
The Adventures and Misadventures of Samuel Clemens
Everything about Mark Twain, Ron Chernow shows us, is writ large, heartbreak and loss a constant redundancy, his explosive fits of anger and condemnation, his repeated lapses into sentimentality, a reiteration of public complaints somehow enabled rather than contradicted by his wondrous humor, a wit at once profound and outrageous. But Twain’s is merely an exaggeration of our existence, its pain and its joy, our past, and our culture, inescapably our Americanness.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the Varieties of Rebellion
Was Randle Patrick McMurphy a fool to go up against Nurse Ratched? Was Nelson Mandela a fool to spend twenty-seven years in prison? Was Alexei Navalny a fool to taunt the Russian powers girding Vladimir Putin and suffer poisoning, prison, and death?
Not Doing Yoga at Montauk with Roy Scheider’s Wife
The 50th anniversary of ‘Jaws’ will trigger the return of sub-rational fears of swimming in the ocean. For me, I am left thinking about a private lunch I shared with Roy Scheider, who played the film’s police chief, and wanting to commit these memories of the great actor to the public record.
The Totality of Trees
We had no idea how much we would miss them in the wake of St. Louis’s May 16 tornado. At least, I did not.
Rich in Proportion to the Number of Things Let Alone
Crap transference is when people give you things they own, apparently with good intentions, except you do not need or want them, and in fact may not have known they existed.
When Words Become Sounds
Words need the company of other words, preferably lots of them, else they fall into a strange pit of meaningless, yet mind-altering sound. Like us, words are social when mingling in tantalizing combinations, and perilously, curiously lonely, but still attractive, by themselves.
Every Path Has Multiple Meanings
I could not tell if the old-timer meant that if I walked fast enough I would not be bitten by bugs, or that he wanted me to get the hell away from him.