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December 2006

Things in the Wrong Hands

Sunday, December 31, 2006

”’We’re going through!’”.”
--James Thurber, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

Two comic masterpieces, a life-affirming poem, and a sharp tale of politics in contemporary Africa.


Food, Glorious Food

Sunday, December 24, 2006

”I learn my lesson, she says. I learn that male characters do not appreciate anybody who tries to ward off surplus tissue. What male characters wish, is substance.”
--Damon Runyon, “A Piece of Pie” .

Food as home, food as power, food as an extreme sport, in three works by two classic humorists and a contemporary novelist.


Loving Libraries

Sunday, December 17, 2006

”James’ reading was a thing apart, an emanation of his in-most self, unaffected by fashion, or elocutionary artifice. He read from his soul, and no one who never heard him read poetry knows what that soul was.”
--Edith Wharton, “A Backward Glance: Henry James” .

Three tributes to the power of libraries.


Stop Making Sense

Sunday, December 10, 2006

”Language was starting to slip in his mouth. Words substituting themselves for one another, and while his own thoughts remained as lucid as ever, sometimes they could only be made manifest on his tongue if they could be wrung out, or twisted, or set with false eyes. ‘False eyes’? Something like that.”
--Brian Evenson, “Mudder Tongue”

One man’s journey past sense, and a delicious slice of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows.

Books by Brian Evenson available for purchase at Amazon.com
Symphony Space


Lessons in parenting

Sunday, December 03, 2006

”Perhaps this is what people meant when the talked about ‘falling in love’. The desire to be with someone everyday, for the rest of her life, so strong, sometimes she frightened herself.”
--Yiyun Le, “Extra”

Poignant lessons in parenting from an American master and a contemporary Chinese author.