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…

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 Don’t misinterpret — I did not find a unpublished, alternate version of this George Saunders story, where both Robin…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…