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September 27, 2009
Tim Roux recently put out a open invitation for SWI writer’s to offer true stories of their first sexual experiences. Although at first I was disinclined to respond, I’ve apparently changed my mind. Here is my contribution:
Kindness: A Budding
If I can trust my memory (and experience advises a degree of caution here), my first sexual experience—or, at any rate, the first in which I had the pleasure of a partner—occurred when I was in the third grade; a seven-year-old of otherwise implacable innocence.
When looking back on some of my other later sexual experiences, I am gratified to be able to say that my first partner in love was not in any way coerced into (or paid for) her services. Her name was Miriam Ching, the only asian student in our school. Miriam was an exceptional student and I remember our teacher explaining to the class that the reason Miriam was so smart was because all the smart Chinese were leaving China for a better life in the U.S. This was rather typical of the 50′s mind-set, but at seven years old, I was still too young, or too dull-witted, for my perceptions to be mangled by politics or racism. To me Miriam was just another kid, albeit a somewhat mysterious and beautiful one. Continue reading Kindness: A Budding
May 19, 2009
Like any country, Japan offers the visitor a wealth of little unexpected pleasures. Among these, I would not include Japan’s writing system. Or, rather, its four writing systems: kanji, hiragana, katakana, and romaji — a truly byzantine contribution to symbolic communication.
There are, of course, applications of this complex graphomaniacal menagerie that have their charm. For instance, the Japanese, as a rule, do not sign their names on official documents. Instead, they use a special stamp called a “hanko.” These are small, oval or cylindrical wooden rods, approximately 1.25 centimeters in diameter and about 6 centimeters in length. Everyone has their own, with the kanji for their name carved in one end. They usually come with a small carrying case that includes a little doll-house-sized ink pad to moisten the hanko for use.
Continue reading Japan: Signing on the Dotted Line
May 10, 2009
Japan, like other countries, tailors its visa regulations to reflect whatever reciprocity it enjoys with each specific country. For instance, in 1988, The U.S. was rather restrictive in issuing work visas to Japanese citizens, so Japan reciprocated with correspondingly strict regulations for Americans. At the time, there were more flexible options available to, for example, citizens of the U.K.
Nevertheless, stricter did not mean strict. The Japanese government required English teachers from the U.S. to have at least a bachelor’s degree, but the degree could be in anything. A B.A. in agricultural entomology or Tibetan Studies would grease the machinery just as effectively as a degree in English or Linguistics.
Bureaucracies are much the same everywhere, but government institutions in Japan seem to have their own personality which distinguishes them from their American counterparts. Two anecdotes come to mind as examples of this difference.
Continue reading Japan: Flavors of Bureaucracy
May 4, 2009
Interviewer: I’d like to begin this interview by confessing that after reading The Case, I found myself feeling more and more frustrated by the sex act. I’m wondering if this is a complaint you’ve heard from other readers?
Mel Nicolai: This is the first time I’ve heard that specific complaint. To tell the truth, most of the comments I’ve received from readers have been positive. But just to be on the safe side, you should probably shy away from activities that hint of pre-organic states of quietude.
Int: Can you give me an example or two of positive feedback you’ve gotten from readers?
Mel: Let’s see. A guy named Al Loi, a machinist from Denver, Colorado, wrote and said that since reading The Case, all his internal organs have run in perfect synchrony. I thinks that pretty positive, don’t you?
Int: It sounds good. Any others?
Continue reading An Interview Conducted In An Imaginary Space
May 1, 2009
I’m an enormous fan of the Austrian writer, Thomas Bernhard. If for some hypothetical reason I were sentenced to reading only one author, and allowed to choose, I would probably choose Bernhard.
Allowing for considerable variation in detail, it seems to me that his novels are underpinned by a shared scenario; a scenario that reflects, and grounds his characters in, the human condition. Something like this: People construct physical environments that are analogs of their internal, conceptual scaffolding. They inhabit these constructions, and in the process try to convince themselves that their “homes” instantiate their ideals. They work diligently, maniacally, to convince themselves of this. And all the while, their creations are ruthlessly and systematically destroying them.
Part of what makes Bernhard so amazing, is that his characters, colluding as they are in their own demise, are not only horribly sad and tragic figures, but also funny. Often hilarious. And as exaggerated as his characters are, their aberrations never fail to reflect an essentially realistic picture of the human condition. Continue reading The Novels of Thomas Bernhard
April 26, 2009
Last night, my wife and I went to the movies and saw Earth. My interest in nature documentaries is usually fairly tepid, but we’d seen the previews and we thought the cinematography might be worth the ticket price. It was.
Having said that, the movie was somewhat disappointing in a number of ways.
For one, the musical score was irritating. It consisted of repetitive, grandiose, fanfares of brassy cliches. My wife commented afterward how much better it would have been if Disney had gotten someone else, maybe Cliff Martinez, to do the music.
Continue reading Earth: A Short Review
April 22, 2009
One often reads statements on book jackets like, “If you liked X, you’ll like Y.” My own experience has been that if I liked X, there is a very good chance I won’t like Y. And not only that, I won’t have a clue why anyone would associate liking one with liking the other.
In Steve Aylett’s case, there is a frequent association drawn between him and Philip K. Dick. Personally, I don’t see it. As it happens, I like them both, but for very different reasons. Dick was an “idea man.” Even at his best he wasn’t a stylist. With Dick, the language was not part of the picture. Dick’s writing only worked when it managed transparency. Continue reading Lint
April 14, 2009
As the days grow warmer, I can anticipate frequent opportunities to observe at close range those of my fellow humans who act as if their dogs are in reality not dogs at all, but hairy, four-legged people, oddly reticent of speech. Borges tells us in his story, The Immortal, “it is well known that monkeys deliberately do not speak so they will not be obliged to work.” Whatever reason dogs have for not speaking, it certainly isn’t because people won’t talk to them. Some dog owners talk to their pets as if they were young children who would soon be starting school. Others as if the dog already had a degree in international relations.
Continue reading Dogs
April 8, 2009
Wittgenstein imagined himself writing a philosophical treatise consisting of nothing but jokes. I suspect he was serious about the idea and the reason he never wrote it was because he lacked a sense of humor. In the same way that a sense of humor would be essential to writing a philosophical treatise consisting only [...]
April 4, 2009
Shit Just Happens!
Directed by: Alex Proyas
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne
Why, I wondered, at the beginning of Knowing, was an M.I.T. astrophysicist teaching remedial 6th-grade science to a classroom full of stylish boneheads? Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” seems to have worked for this bunch. Oh, well. Let it slide. No problem. What’s next? More good stuff, of course: the astrophysicist proceeds to explain that “determinism” is when you have “reason” and “purpose,” and “chaos” is when “shit just happens.” Ouch!
Continue reading Movie Review: Knowing
April 1, 2009
The Origins of Religious Belief
Searching for the origins of religious belief is a curiously wrong-headed endeavor. Religious belief is not a distinctive type of human activity. It did not show up at some point in human history, marking the beginning of something new. Religious beliefs, like other beliefs, are instances of believing. Like believing a daily glass of wine is good for my health, or believing Betty-Sue loves me, or believing I love Betty-Sue. Believing in god or gods or what have you is just an instance of believing. Continue reading Stray Thoughts
March 28, 2009
It might be argued that, as science and technology increase the pace of change, the future, about which speculative fiction speculates, has drawn steadily closer to the present. For those of a more dystopian cast of mind, one might argue that the present is moving steadily further and further away; as it becomes stranger and less predictable, it appropriates the indeterminacy and unpredictability that had formerly been marks of the future.
It’s been a couple of years now since the publication of William Gibson’s latest novel, Spook Country. Maybe you haven’t read it yet. Maybe you tried one of his early science fiction novels and found the romanticized techno-cowboy ambience uninspiring. Well, forget all that. Maybe you just don’t read SciFi. Maybe you aren’t amused by aliens, implants, nano-widgets, and all the other what-nots waiting to waylay us in an imagined future. That’s understandable. But beside the point.
Continue reading William Gibson: Spook Country
March 26, 2009
That was a lot easier than I’d expected, which, by itself, gave me pause. Was there a message being conveyed? Did I lack the sophistication, the sensitivity, to interpret it? Had the conditions of my being deteriorated to the point where I now existed within a qualitative opacity that obscured the obvious? And if that were the case, was I doomed to delude myself into believing the contrary?
Husserl believed that the present passed from fullness into emptiness. But he also wore a diving mask and snorkel when he fed his gold fish.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 20
March 25, 2009
It was well past dawn by the time I made it home to bed. I’d set the alarm clock for noon. I was dreaming when it went off. In the dream, I was older and wiser. I was trying to capture this unlikely scenario on video, but when I played back the tape, it was always of something completely different. This happened over and over. First, it was a documentary about corporate taxes and federal revenue. Then I was watching a guy spray paint graffiti on the side of a building. I was mesmerized as letter by letter he wrote: Nice Crispy Insight. Then I was standing in an empty room. There was something wrong with my breathing. When I inhaled, I made this weird humming noise. I sounded like an asthmatic poltergeist.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 19
March 24, 2009
I tend to cut sorcerers a little extra slack. This is just common sense. What yesterday may have existed only in the realm of the paranormal, tomorrow might enter into some hyphenated relationship with fashion.
“What can I say, Ruff? Life can be savage at times.”
The conversation lagged. Ruff had retreated into the auxiliary immensities of his inner landscape. As much as I might empathize, I couldn’t follow him there. So I sat quietly, sipping my beer, ruminating on Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Since nothing much escapes a black hole, I was wondering to what extent the events inside of one could be regarded as subjective? A question like that might not seem particularly compelling on a sunny day while strolling through an open field. But the Thing-In-Itself could drive a stake right through the heart of your normal noetic priorities.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 18
March 22, 2009
The modern world gives us the impression of offering a vast inventory of options. But in reality, our individual choices are rather limited. “As far as I’ve ever been able to determine,” I said to Ruff, “time is a closed system in which amino acids sweep themselves into the void.”
“You see, Brock! That’s what I mean. Shit, man! I knew you’d understand. You’re always right there with me, man. If not two steps ahead.”
The Thing-In-Itself seemed to resonate in a way the average man might associate with a flooded ontology. I wanted to hear the rest of Ruff’s story before we ended up swamped in our own elixirs. “So what happened with the Little Chimney?”
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 17
March 21, 2009
I waited patiently, giving Ruff what time he needed to piece together a public version of his private chaos. There are probably times when it makes sense to pause for a few minutes, anyway, on the off chance that you might preserve some partial balance in your own life. Whether or not this was one of those times was pretty much up for grabs.
Either way, Ruff wasn’t long in dematerializing whatever it was clogging his mental space. “Screw it!” he blurted. “The way I figure it, man, if anyone could understand, it’s you.”
I took that as a compliment, which wasn’t technically unthinkable, and Ruff began to tell his tale.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 16
March 20, 2009
Paige Zero had long since gone to bed. I walked quietly down the hall to her bedroom and stopped at the door. I could hear the soft even breathing of her sleep. I thought about the Japanese forces occupying Chou Koutien in 1939 and decided it was best to leave. I made sure her place was locked up, then descended the stairs, wondering to what extent the possibilities of the moment had been sacrificed to some proprietary historical format.
A light mist drifted through the streets. At least I think it was mist. It wasn’t quite the right color as it floated past the street lamps. But that might have been the lamps, or possibly a fluctuation in the microwave background. At any rate, the night was cold and I was hungry, and I needed a nutritional alternative to my refrigerator. So I headed for the only place open at that hour: the Thing-In-Itself Cantina.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 15
March 19, 2009
That took about twenty minutes.
I got a muscle cramp in my jaw and had to bail out, in medias res. At first I tried to ignore the discomfort by diverting my attention through the twelve stages of Ptolemy. But then my jaw really locked up. It felt like the joint was fuzed [...]
March 18, 2009
There are a lot of books out there, so I need a few rough-grained filters to clear away some of the “No”s, just to reduce the number of “Maybe”s to something even slightly manageable. Normally, the fact that a book is classified as “Young Adult” is enough to terminate any inclination to expose myself to the contents. If, in a single pass, I can dispense with entire genres (Young Adult, Romance, Horror), so much the better.
Of course, by doing this I ignore books that might actually be worth reading, but, well, life is short. If something I normally wouldn’t read somehow falls through my rejection screens, more often than not it will only confirm the wisdom of my broad categorical exclusions. I’ll read a few pages before it dawns on me that I’ve been diddled by a crafty marketing scheme, and I’ll toss the malodorous offender into my box of public library donations.
Continue reading M.T. Anderson: Feed
March 18, 2009
The night was richly incriminating, just the way I liked it. Generally speaking, the more opaque something is, the more seductive it can be. The night, by being impenetrable, by reducing the immediate to a narrowly confined radius of perception, equalizes everything beyond that radius. So the mysteries of the unknown, no matter how remote, seem to be just beyond our reach. This delusion is particularly useful when I need a way to propel myself into situations that defy my understanding. With a little luck, I miss the potholes, reaching my destination with no more than the American average of 91 industrial compounds and pollutants in my bloodstream.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 13
March 17, 2009
Some time after Lucy had left, I began to notice a vaguely distinct absence. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Some kind of uncontainable inversion had folded in on itself, expanding into a lurid opacity. Superficial gaps in duration wafted through my apartment, trailing their scent of germ-ridden geometry. I was afraid if I didn’t air out my lungs, I’d end up with some weird bronchial condition normally confined to burrowing animals.
Lucy had left my key on the coffee table. I picked it up and examined it carefully, as if I expected it to answer two questions that were puzzling me: Why did Lucy want the key in the first place? and, How did I get back into my apartment without it? But I wasn’t in the mood to contend with obscurities. I grabbed my coat and left my apartment. I wasn’t sure what hours Dink was working, so I decided to take the stairs rather than expose myself to any more unregulated rhetoric.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 12
March 16, 2009
I put her tea on the coffee table and took mine to an armchair. Lucy sipped hers quietly. I, on the other hand, was still experiencing override levels of proximity tension: Lucy Rain-Donut on the sofa, me in the armchair, the space in between an expanding dimension of hard-core improbability. But I kept my mouth shut. There was always the chance she’d mistake my silence for some kind of mutated lucidity.
Lucy glanced at me now and then as several minutes passed, the ticking of the clock in perfect agreement with the prevailing conception of scientific rigor. I was wondering if Leibniz’ theory of pre-established harmony could account for the increasing pressure in my groin when Lucy broke the silence.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 11
March 15, 2009
For most of us, the world of everyday life remains crudely formulated. This isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Crudity can be a conduit through which, if it ever does, the transcendent emerges. Of course, our normal state of extreme imbalance makes it rather difficult to discriminate; difficult to distinguish the transcendent from our habitually tormented itineraries. As I finished dressing, I detected a faint but familiar buzz in my inner ear, a kind of corpuscular droning, that told me with pharmaceutical certainty that I was back on The Case.
With a decisive stride, I headed across the living room. About half way, I stumbled into a cloud of impenetrable inutility. It was wafting up out of the carpet like pre-industrial smog, filling my lungs with a vaporous amnesia. A truly dangerous situation. If someone hadn’t started banging on my door again, I’m not sure what would have happened.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 10
March 14, 2009
It was late afternoon when a distant knocking interrupted my slumber. There was a damp, cloying density behind my eyes, as if catatonic orchids were blooming in my frontal lobes. The knocking was pulling the damned things out by their roots. I was completely defoliated before it got through to me that someone was knocking at my front door. This presented me with a choice. I could answer the door, bowing to the tyranny of reality, or I could follow the spirit of the times and deny my perceptions.
Meirski, I said to myself, you’re a recklessly modern man.
It was well into evening when I woke up again. Opening my eyes in the dark of my apartment, I experienced a wave of atmospherics so objective that when it faded back into the darkness I was panting like a solipsist.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 9
March 13, 2009
The next morning was Monday. Mondays, as a rule, are not my best days. I’ve never found a satisfactory method for starting one. Cryptic engines of inanity, I always find myself telescoping into them like some kind of cartoon spastic.
I got up and did some of the things people generally do when they get up in the morning, and one or two other things I imagine most people don’t.
Performing these morning rituals eventually led me to the refrigerator. This miracle of human ingenuity always reminded me of Galileo’s run-ins with the church. The old astronomer had gone up against a pomposity as opaque and capricious as anything time has allowed man to manufacture.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 8
March 12, 2009
Walking in the sunlight helped to dispel my mood and lessen an immediate need for quarantine. The human mind, it occurred to me, has developed powerful immunities to its own exotic mythology. Or at any rate, it has learned to amuse itself calculating the probabilities.
Outside again, breathing the city’s stench soon brought The Case back into focus. Clues were everywhere, even if not always in an undisguised state. All I really needed was some kind of interpretive apparatus that would generate a fertile context for my investigation. I was strolling aimlessly, hoping to be colonized by the logic of optimism, when it dawned on me that Paige Zero might serve as the ideal filter for The Case. True, our first encounter had left me feeling like I’d been baked into an atavistic casserole, but that didn’t necessarily mean I’d gotten off to a bad start. And if worse should come to worse, I reasoned, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d have to revamp my numerology.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 7
March 11, 2009
We decided to move to a table. As we crossed the room, a frisson of incipient sensations fluttered through my extremities. It felt like voodoo cats were purring in my bone marrow. Odd that this would leave me feeling so charismatic, but there it was.
Paige picked a small table with two chairs along the back wall. I hadn’t sat in that part of the Cantina for quite some time and I wasn’t entirely confident that my immune system was tuned to it. On the other hand, I didn’t want to rule out the possibility of some strategic advantage in having my viral protein libraries updated.
In an enchanting exhibition of common sense, Paige sat down and made herself comfortable. “Here’s a question for you, Brock Meirski. If we have to share a water hole with all the predators, what’s the best way to avoid being eaten?”
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 6
March 11, 2009
Published by John Weatherhill, Inc. 1978
Robert Aitken’s, A Zen Wave: Basho’s Haiku & Zen is an exceptionally fine book on two counts: it is a penetrating commentary on Zen as lived by the poet Basho, and it is an exemplary translation of Basho’s poetry.
What makes A Zen Wave stand out? Translators of haiku, of which there have been many, have employed a variety of strategies in attempting to render the compact haiku form into English. In translating Basho, Aitken has adopted the only sensible strategies: he dispenses with the 5-7-5 syllable structure, for the simple reason that it doesn’t work in English, and he resists any temptation to impose western poetic conventions. Instead, he focuses on capturing the Zen spirit of Basho. It is here, in conveying the spirit of Basho’s haiku, that Aitken proves himself exceptionally adept.
Continue reading Robert Aitken: A Zen Wave
March 10, 2009
There are moments when, beneath the superficial forces of life, real forces flush us straight down the drain pipe. I took the stool to her right. This walking-over-and-sitting-on-a-stool was such a familiar act that I was unaware of having slipped into another dimension. I have no idea how much time passed, or if any did. I seemed to have undergone some kind of subtle temporal mutation. Stupefied, the air buzzed with frictionless duration, suspending me in a delicately shimmering grid in which the woman was the world’s only remaining coordinate. It occurred to me that something similar may have happened to the Aztecs, and that thought released me from noetic suspension. I realized my mouth was hanging open and I closed it so hard my teeth clacked together. The woman giggled, and the indignity re-anchored me inside the orbit of my usual afflictions.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 5
March 9, 2009
West on Raft.
Destination: The Thing-In-Itself Cantina.
As I walked, I let my eyes play lightly across the kaleidoscopic bustle of city surfaces. I’ve always gotten a certain pleasure out of confirming the existence of an external world. Catching glimpses of myself reflected in shop windows certified my own existence while documenting, if only for an instant, the reality of the anonymous hordes. And if I made eye contact with a stranger in the crowd, I felt that my own existence had expanded, however slightly, by being cataloged in someone else’s.
But as enjoyable as it was, I could sense behind all that fleeting intimacy the vast intervening expanses littered with official fires, desperate hours, twisted threats and shadowy phantom carcasses veiled with life. In short, I was suffocating! By the time I got to the Thing-In-Itself Cantina, my infrastructure had started to crystallize.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 4
March 8, 2009
I walked back across the hall and pressed the elevator’s “Down” button. It failed to light, but I knew that didn’t necessarily mean the elevator was out of order. So I pushed it again, and again it failed to light, but this time I could hear the mechanism stir itself.
At times like this, I mused, modern man is particularly vulnerable, in danger of being overcome by that venomous lullaby he calls reality. On the other hand, I thought, it might be prudent to consider the alternatives. After all, for all I really knew, moments like this might be indispensable to the advance of civilization.
The elevator arrived, but the doors vibrated without opening, like two dancers mindless with exhaustion, confused because the music has stopped. I figured it was only a matter of time. Dink was eccentric, but he was also astute at keeping within the parameters of the common man’s tolerance for anomaly. And there was no question that, compared to Dink, I was the common man. The vibration resumed momentarily and the elevator doors sprang open like a demonstration of the power of God’s thought.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 3
March 7, 2009
I was wrong, of course. Calculations tend to fizzle in the static of a world saturated with obsolete data. Before I could press the “Down” button, my neighbor’s apartment door opened. As I always do when confronted with situations requiring spontaneous efficiency, I hesitated. That brief moment of hesitation sliced clean through the vectors of circumstance.
“Brock! Come here, I need favor.”
Her name was Lucy Rain-Donut. Lucy was from somewhere else. There was no knowing what a favor for her might entail, but she certainly had a knack for expressing herself with terse authority. She’d only opened the door a few inches and I could just make out the shaded contours of her face angled behind the opening.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 2
March 6, 2009
The world is everything that is the case.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
Some nights are just dark spots in space.
I woke up feeling like I’d been skewered by the creeping imponderables. I got out of bed and headed for the toilet, glancing at myself in the bathroom mirror. Meirski, I said to my reflection, you look like the ass-end of a scorched coyote.
I took a much needed piss, watching the stream of my urine plunge into the water and diffuse to a tepid yellow, a mundane demonstration of fluid dynamics challenging the descriptive power of mathematics.
Continue reading The Case: Chapter 1
March 6, 2009
John Updike, who passed away recently, had nothing at all to do with my decision to read Nicholson Baker’s, U and I. I’ve never cared for Updike. I’ve started a few of his novels, but never made it into triple-digit page numbers. He bores me. But I rather like Baker.
Now, U and I revolves around Baker’s “imaginary friendship” with Updike. So it might seem a bit odd to enjoy reading a book about an author I don’t like, even when written by an author I do. But in this case, there is a certain imaginary symmetry between Baker writing about Updike and me reading Baker writing about Updike.
Baker makes it clear that his familiarity with the Updike corpus is limited and piecemeal, and that he denied himself any additional exposure to Updike’s writing in order to avoid the possibility of a more contemporary assessment contaminating his memories. Analogously, by not reading Updike, I avoided any possibility of his writing contaminating my enjoyment of Baker writing about Updike. An Updike fan might have the advantage of being prepped to enjoy Baker’s book in ways I wasn’t. On the other hand, people don’t always like someone else interfering with their private imaginings. Knowing and liking Updike could just as easily work against the pleasure of reading Baker. I don’t know.
Continue reading Nicholson Baker: U and I
March 3, 2009
I was at one of the many local Starbucks the other day, waiting for my Double-Tall Cappuccino, when a young woman who had been yakking with the barista asked me if the book I had with me was one of their journals. The book was a hardback copy of Nicholson Baker’s, U and I. I had removed the dust jacket and the book boards were a moldy, gray-green color while the binding was the approximate shade of baby shit. (Were these the colors Starbucks management had chosen for their employee’s journals?) I held the book up to give her a better look and explained that, no, it was a novel.
Continue reading Starbucks Journals?
February 26, 2009
Originally published in 2002 by Gallimard English edition published in 2008 by Seven Stories Press Translated by Anna Moschovakis
In 62 pages of controlled, polished, very intelligent prose, Annie Ernaux recounts, in the words of her narrator, “an exercise in the abandonment of intelligence.” I say ‘recounts’ with a certain hesitation, because, as [...]
February 23, 2009
Maybe you’re one of those aspiring writers who has a 60,000-word novel you’d like to get published, but the word is the publishing companies want something fatter. Literature, after all, should not be treated any differently than hamburger. In the best of all possible worlds, it should be sold by weight.
So you’re wondering [...]
February 19, 2009
I’ve gotten the impression, from a distance, that there is an ongoing battle over the use of “that” in writing. A good deal of this strife seems to originate in office environments where people with managerial authority – perhaps with a couple of English classes on their college transcripts – go prescriptive on anyone [...]
February 12, 2009
This is my first post to SWI. Given that this blog came into existence out of dissatisfaction with radio and TV, with the way they so often frustrate the free exchange of opinion, I thought I would comment briefly on a few thoughts I’ve had about TV and blogs.
One significant difference [...]
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