Stuff — events — dates — pile up in our individual histories, but to try organizing them in temporal order, to turn time into space via filing, is to fall back on a convenient fiction.
Smith is destined to become to Northwest London what Philip Roth is to Newark, or even what James Joyce is to Dublin.
Of Trepalia and Chewing Stones
Who, after all, wants to grow up in a post-fabulous age — even one protected, more often than not, from the stench of shit? Who wants to exist in a world bereft of magic?
To suggest that a city or site can be “done,” like dishes, the laundry, or homework, reduces said city to the limits of the do-er’s consciousness or experience. And to suggest that reality ends with your experience is to be narrow-minded, or ignorant.
Death remains in the poppy fields, away from the homes to which we inevitably return, impossible to assimilate in our minds.
Here is the problem: our culture still offers men a broader spectrum of acceptable personality types than it does women.
More Found Literary Love Letters from Political Figures
After the stir over the release of Barack Obama’s letter on “The Wasteland” to his college girlfriend, the timing seemed right to dig into the epistolary archives of other contemporary political figures.
Close to Home: One Man vs. the Global Climate
What is the president of a country of 350,000 to do about an issue that requires the cooperation of the world’s most powerful heads of state?
The Rise of the Lecherous Professor (in Fiction)
He’s crusty, grumpy, aging, and set in his outdated ways. He’s a he. Mortality is on his mind, and his will to bed women a fraction of his age increases in direct proportion to his fear of aging and death.
Climate Change, Kafka, and the End of Place
As Kafka de-territorialized German, global warming is de-territorializing climate.