Christopher Morley’s The Haunted Bookshop begins with the mysterious disappearance from the Bookshop’s shelves of Thomas Carlyle’s biography of Oliver Cromwell, that bringer of the reign of Christian righteousness and short hair to a people who, after a taste of perfection and a lot of death, decided they preferred neither. The book disappears, reappears, disappears, […]
The Haunted Bookshop II: “Christianity Fails Again” Read More »
On the landing of a high school stairway one day, I happened to witness the unhappy ending of a friend’s romance with one of our school’s acknowledged beauties. He had been pleading whatever case he thought he had for a while when she issued her verdict, with the haughty finality available to the beautiful young.
The Problem with Cancel Culture and Literary Censorship Read More »
Though I was eager to get back to The World and shed my fatigues, even before I was cut loose I felt grateful for my Army years. But I clearly didn’t belong in the Army or aspire to make a career of it, and during my tenure with the battalion, I had made this plain
Stars and Stripes Forever Read More »
I graduated from Northwestern in 1964 with no idea what to do next. I most certainly didn’t want to continue in academia. I knew what I’d be doing if I didn’t get married or hook up with a graduate school – I’d get drafted. I decided, in my half-assed fashion, to allow that to happen,
My editor has written me the following: “College is now irrelevant to anyone with a good mind who knows what he wants from life. Higher Education is now just a place for group socialization or for those who need to be given discipline and direction. Digital platforms have democratized knowledge.” It seemed to me I’d
Johnny’s Wonton Shopping Trip: A Letter to My Editor Read More »
I’d started something I was pretending was a novel up in Denver, and I continued with it for a while. I’d been reading, or at least pretending to read, the “new novels” of Alain Robbe-Grillet, and catching the films of Antonioni and Bergman, so I was up to date on pretentious, intentionally obscure anti-narratives, and