One could easily imagine the principal character here, Morris Schutt, meeting Barney Panovsky in a hotel bar and, together, the two of them putting a serious dent in a bottle of McCallan.
Author: David Barker
Four Novels by David Bergen: The Age of Hope
In a way, Bergen is the perfect author to read during a pandemic lockdown. History may record the Covid-19 global pandemic as a dramatic crisis worthy of its own straight-to-Netflix movie. But sitting here in the midst of it, I experience it not so much as a crisis as I do a chronic state to be endured.
Four Novels by David Bergen: The Time In Between
For me, what drives the comparison [to Denis Johnson] more deeply is the style of the writing. Both writers deploy a crisp detached prose that is perfectly suited to evince an emotionally lost protagonist looking from the outside in.
Facial Recognition and G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday
To the extent that our reality is increasingly defined by our connection to virtual environments, the function of our (facial) identity will be increasingly restricted to concerns of social control and commercial opportunity.
Short Story: My Covid Suffering
While she waited for the water to boil, Amanda stared at her tiny head reflected back to her in the curved metal surface of the kettle, and she considered that maybe her life was beginning to feel as warped as it appeared to her in the kettle.
“Stop Asian Hate” and Other Signs of Spring
This is the first time in months that I’ve been out with my camera and have interacted with a live human being. It’s as if I’ve been holding my breath all winter and can suddenly let it out (while still wearing a mask, of course). It gave me such a lift to chat with a stranger.
Short Story: Where’s Frank?
The thing is: this worry is not something that happens in my head. Whatever happens in my head is only a symptom of something more pervasive that overwhelms my body. I feel it in my shoulders. By the end of a day, it feels as if I’m carrying a massive weight that bows me down.
Remembering The 2017 Inauguration
It was odd to travel through a red state at that particular moment in history. In fact, the western shore of Florida was experiencing a red tide and people with respiratory issues complained that it was difficult to breathe. No kidding.
Miasma
Before there were germs, there was miasma. Bad air. Billows rolling off the bogs and fens. The stench of swamp gas. The rot of ferns and trees fallen to decay in stagnant pools. Fetid. Rancid. Odoriferous.
A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman
The lesson we learn from the 14th century is that the world does not tolerate insupportable ideas. Modernity is one such idea and, although it may take generations, it will pass away.
2020 Reading Roundup
For me, books only gain significance as they fall into conversation with other books or as they enlarge the space available for conversation with the wider world. There is no book, only books.
The Great Reset, Klaus Schwab & Thierry Malleret
Although The Great Reset has become the flashpoint for conspiracy lunatics, it is important to ignore the noise they produce. Push through. Read the book in its intended spirit: as the start of a wide-ranging conversation about our collective future.
The Blue Clerk, by Dionne Brand
Another way of thinking about the narrative is to treat it as a neurological drama: the author (recto) and the blue clerk (verso) are metaphorical ways of reflecting the bicameral structure of the human brain.
A City Boy Meets A Country Bug
My wife and I live in antiseptic circumstances. High above the city streets, shuttered in our condo, it’s easy for us to self-isolate. Covid-19 is not the only thing we keep at bay. We’re high enough that we don’t get bugs either.
Cities And Pathogens
More people live in my hometown than lived on the entire planet when humans first organized themselves into large communities. Yet that was all it took to produce most of the diseases that have afflicted us even to the present day.