Lake Charles, Louisiana, after Laura
August 31, 2020
Read more by John Griswold here.
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“Loser Back Home” is Having a Good Trip
Loser Back Home (LBH), who prefers to remain pseudonymous, is traveling through China right now. He has made some 31 social media videos—which began with the series title, “Day [9, 11, 18, 28, 62, etc.] of Not Understanding Anything in China”—as he has passed through, eg, Ganzhou, Ningming, Wuhan, Yueyang, Shaoshan, Chongqing, Chengdu, the Three Gorges area, Zhang Zhou, and other places, including non-Chinese cities Bangkok and Vientiane.
Roald Dahl, Hidden Auteur for ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’
“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” is by turns charming, troubling, funny, dark, romantic, nonsensical, and weird. More than many other movies, it continues to inspire questions about its layers of inventiveness, even though its premise—that specific inputs cannot explain magical output—is in the news every morning now.
The Comfort of Jackets
More than most clothing, jackets last for years, so their most important quality, the accretion of stories, has a chance to build modestly, privately.
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A Late-Blooming Nobelist Who Hates the Spotlight
Three weeks ago, the Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Upon learning of the prize, Carson said “Yikes.”
It was that single word, more than all the paeans to her “bold and inventive oeuvre,” that made me want to know…
“Loser Back Home” is Having a Good Trip
Loser Back Home (LBH), who prefers to remain pseudonymous, is traveling through China right now. He has made some 31 social media videos—which began with the series title, “Day [9, 11, 18, 28, 62, etc.] of Not Understanding Anything in China”—as he has passed through, eg, Ganzhou, Ningming, Wuhan, Yueyang, Shaoshan, Chongqing, Chengdu, the Three Gorges area, Zhang Zhou, and other places, including non-Chinese cities Bangkok and Vientiane.
Chekhov Had an Antidote to Our Chaos
He abhorred writerly tricks and happily-ever-after endings. And he was deeply realistic. He knew there was no way to bring opposing beliefs and values into harmony. Hold back the chaos, in other words, and allow as much human flourishing as possible.
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The Speculative Value of a Stolen Literary Bust
By the time it was gone, the change was subtle but unmistakable: one corner left without its figure, one pedestal left bare. But to understand why that absence matters, it helps to understand who Kate Chopin was and the stories she wrote.
Recipes for Rascals
The ginger nut (and by association other cookies of its type, such as those made with black peppercorns) has an aggressive presence but offers scant sustenance. It is meant to aid digestion of other things, to have a warming effect in winter, to relieve boredom, and perhaps to remind us we are alive in the sometimes dry, husky business of life.
Standing at the Edge of Two Worlds
Having lived in the United States for a few years, I have either struggled to understand democracy in practice or struggled to keep up with it.