Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
$200 is a lot of money for a toy monkey, probably more than the purchase price of most toy monkeys. What is so special about this toy monkey that it warrants a $200 reward? Is there a flash drive sewn inside with sensitive intelligence reports? Or drug-filled condoms…
I was taken aback. We had been loyal customers for years, paying thousands of dollars in premiums. How could they deny our claim—not even our claim, but the right to make our claim—based on what was, after all, a simple technicality?
We eat at the bar; my nephew is serving. A man sits on the stool to my left. He says he’s at the convention for the North American Widget Manufacturers Association or something like that. As soon as he opens his mouth, we know he’s an American …
I bought a copy of The Waterproof Bible this summer in a Haliburton book store called Master’s Book Store. Naive person that I am, it never crossed my mind that the Master refers to Jesus and the book store is a Christian book store.
The System woke the Agent twenty-four hours before it woke the President. That was the protocol. Twenty-four hours would give the Agent time to secure the bunker and to become clear-headed enough to serve the President’s needs.
I have lived long enough to have had a past. In that past, I remember there was a future. It was the future of the science fiction novels I read, and of the movies I watched.
Joseph hints at a gentler way of describing Arbus’s practice and, by extension, Joseph’s broadest poetic intention. She asks: “How do we talk to one another from the sanctuary of our own solitudes?”
When I look at the photographs I took of the nighttime cutting, I hear a crackling sound. This is not memory; at the time, I could not hear the workers for all the traffic on the street. It’s more a synaesthetic experience. I ‘hear’ the images.
When I’m out with my camera, I’m drawn to horses the same way I’m drawn to children blowing bubbles and protesters rioting. Photographically speaking, horses make a great subject, especially on a 21st century city street where they seem so out-of-place.
In an essay called “The Ideal Palace” John Berger tells about a creation by Ferdinand Cheval, a “peasant” country postman who, in his spare time, spent 33 years and some 93,000 hours building a massive monument from stones.
In tone and general outlook, Kaku’s book reminds me of I. M. Levitt’s 1956 book, A Space Traveller’s Guide To Mars. Although published more than 60 years apart, the books share a sentiment of optimism, an absolute faith in technology’s capacity to overcome all obstacles, and a penchant for the speculative.
If Dr. Seuss were writing his “How The Grinch Stole Christmas!” in 2019, I think the Grinch would be a fanatical Christian.
A gifted storyteller wrote: A man hit his dog on the head. At first, I took this to be the finest story I had ever read. Concise and spare, it did precisely what a good story should do: it created a space into which I could make an imaginative leap.
I went out in the first snowfall of the season. The snow itself produces a sense of vagueness. But that wasn’t enough for me. I went one further and framed shots of snow falling over steam vents. Then I waited for people to walk through the frame.
Upstate concerns an aging property developer from Northumberland and his relationship with his two adult daughters.