Do you think you’re clever because you’re ironic?
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is so good, it makes you mad. And of course, the narrator, an “eccentric recluse” in a remote Polish village, has…
Category: Reading
What is being read at the moment.
Trump is … not new
“Old Noel Constant had never known anything about business, and neither had his son—and what little charms the Constants had evaporated the instant they pretended that their successes depended on…
Attention to the Next Generation
This line from Evelyn Waugh, which he gave to the maundering Dr. Puttock, pretty much presaged what became an implicit but prevailing attitude guiding the next several decades: “Some people…
To all those “news avoiders”
“The water I drink, the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the bed I sleep on, are all determined by politics, good or bad. Politics is about power and…
Gotta find sources for the Homo Superior
Classic sci-fi novel Odd John reads like a proto-X-Men story because that’s what it is. Reputable sources credit author Olaf Stapledon with coining Homo superior, which is of course Magneto’s…
Bang, Bang, Lucifer’s Hammer comes down on my head
Writers, content creators, etc., all fetishcize the post-apocalyptic world since it is an opening for them to demonstrate their deep familiarity with the darkness at the heart of humanity. And…
Clones, He Said!
“It’s frowned upon to say so, but if we’re being honest, come on—please. There are currently billions of humans. Even allowing for some repetition, are there billions of reasons for…
Le incel d’origine?
From Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, page 77 of the Penguin Classics edition, translated by Robert Baldick. “He envied pianists their talent and soldiers their scars. He longed for a dangerous illness,…
Two Versions of “Tenth of December”
I have read two different versions of the “Tenth of December.” Don’t misinterpret — I did not find a unpublished, alternate version of this George Saunders story, where both Robin…
Grim Afterlife
Yeesh, a very grim imagining of what we could encounter in the great unknown, from Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things: “What if it doesn’t get better? What if…