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…
Tag: books
From Cannery Row to Hollywood Star Lanes
From Cannery Row to The Big Lebowski
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…
Why is there dust on your Moby Dick?
“I’m trying to decide what to read next.” “I read this great book last year…” “Oh you don’t need to worry about me. I have plenty to choose from.” “OK….
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…
Don’t Tell Him about Hulu (or the free trial options)
The narrator of “Dreams of Zombies” cannot afford a Hulu subscription, so it would be best NOT to tell him about the upcoming series for Y: The Last Man. At…
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 Don’t misinterpret — I did not find a unpublished, alternate version of this George Saunders story, where both Robin…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…
Picking “Grapes of Wrath” out of “The Getaway”
I did not realize the soil in Jim Thompson’s “The Getaway” was so rich that it sprouted “The Grapes of Wrath”: Doc knew people; and … he knew this kind…