Apparently, Jimmy had been given an advance of a hundred thousand dollars for If Beale Street Could Talk with the promise of another two hundred thousand on completion. I gathered that he was anxious to get it done. It seemed as if he needed the seclusion of this special place to write about the tragic life of black Americans.
While fewer people may be collecting unemployment benefits, the economic blow is no less painful. The statistics on women’s unemployment rates are often reported as lower than men’s, yet this statistical difference often downplays women’s layoff experiences.
The Angola Rodeo survives when other prison rodeos have closed because, of all places in America, Angola is the perfect stage.
As our historical record evolves from letters written in quill and ink to status updates, what we will mourn remains to be seen.
Rejoice, we are told: Television has never been better. And all that is old becomes new again.
I suppose mothers are always trying to save their sons. And sons are always making their mothers suffer, always making their mothers need to save them. Despite my stupidity, my unworthiness, my mother was determined to save me anyhow.
Every era tends to think theirs is the most difficult, amazing, or inexplicable time period, but historians would remind us that this assumption is the folly of myopic thinking. The same can be said for the past century on Cherokee Street.
I was not thinking of the modern catastrophes of movement and making-do that end so many human relationships in our time. For some reason I was thinking of Bobby McHein.
A man of science makes dead matter live yet abandons his own creation. A creature is composed of human body parts yet denied a place in human society. The epic struggle that ensues between creator and creature poses enduring questions to all of us.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and in the Romantic age more generally, monstrosity came to be conceived as an excess of vitality. Exactly what life was, however, was a matter of intense debate.