Literature, both high and low.
Comics fans are hardly unique in having a standoffish relationship with the medium they love. (They are probably outpaced by sports fans in terms of the distance between the product on display and the character of the culture that has grown up around it, but that’s another story.) Every genre, …
From William T. Vollman’s Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means. COPS LOOKING FOR MOLEST CASE SUSPECT: Penang – Police are looking for a factory bus driver who allegedly fondled the breasts of a 23-year-old woman in Air Itam here recently…It is learnt that …
From Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West. They grew gaunted and lank under the white suns of those days and their hollow burnedout eyes were like those of noctambulants surprised by day. Crouched under their hats they seemed fugitives on sone grander scale, like beings …
From Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory. The British fought the war for four years and three months. Its potential of ironic meaning, considered not now in relation to the complacencies of the past but in itself alone, emerges when we consider its events chronologically. The last five …
I’m kicking off a week of Deep Reads, in hopes of jumping back in the habit of reading books, which I’ve fallen out of for the last couple of months. Regular content — including, I promise, new Sandwich Century entries — will resume next week. From Fred Halliday’s 100 Myths …
And now it’s time for another exciting installment of LEONARD GIVES ADVICE TO WRITERS EVEN THOUGH HE IS TERRIBLE! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One of the biggest problems in writing fiction is giving a character attributes that you, as a writer, do not possess. “Write what you know”, they say, and if, for …
Occasionally, I’d like to share somewhat longer excerpts from things I’ve read and been impressed by than my usual slender quote-of-the-day offerings. Here’s the first, from Hannah Arendt’s Essays in Understanding 1930-1954: “In trying to understand what were the real motives which caused people to act as cogs in the …
Since I’ve been unemployed, I buy all my books at Wal-Mart. They only offer three kinds of books (religious, self-help, and monster-based romance), none of which I enjoy, so it keeps me from spending too much money. Today, I was up at the Wal-Mart on the Austin Highway, and I …
Today we’ll be re-launching a short story series I started several years ago called “Billy’s Prison Diary”. Enjoy. *** to hear henry tell it them people just about controled the whole world. sometimes wed be over to lances diner grill and tommyd be readin the paper and henryd up and …
I want to like Stephen King. I really, really do. He’s undeniably an important writer, at least insofar as he’s written a ton of books that have sold enormously well, and become virtually synonymous with “contemporary American novelist”. He’s managed to remain successful even in a terrible downtime for fiction, …
David Brion Davis’ Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World is one of those rare books that manages to draw information from dozens, if not hundreds, of varying sources about an enormously complex subject and streamline them into a work that is incredibly readable and …
