Key West’s physical beauty draws tourists like a magnet, but the locals, or Conchs, give the island heart. The Conchs are people who have always been there or who have broken free from the centripetal pull of the Lower 48. In one sense, they live in a different country of their own creation, one that epitomizes the […]
Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and the Ghosts of Key West Read More »
Whether people are beautiful and friendly or unattractive and disruptive, ultimately they are human beings, just like oneself. Like oneself, they want happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, their right to overcome suffering and be happy is equal to one’s own. Now, when you recognize that all beings are equal in both their desire
The Dalai Lama on Compassion Read More »
A sophomore in high school, I got my first job at a second-hand bookstore a few blocks west of the Northwestern University campus. I mainly dusted and straightened the innumerable old books of all sorts, took in money and made change, and cleaned up the place on Saturday mornings. That last task was the vital
Melville’s Pale Ravener Read More »
When I was in my twenties and living in New York City, I decided to impress my new boyfriend by serving Julia Child’s classic dish boeuf bourguignon in my apartment, which sat on the third floor of a dingy tenement walkup with a tiny and outdated kitchen. Some relevant facts: I was not a very
This is a story about shoes, 300 pairs give or take, and my 30-year relationship with a significant other named Amy, who lived in Kansas with her parakeet, and whom I never got a chance to meet. Amy and I were introduced to each other in the early 1970s through N.O.S.E., or the National Odd
In John Dunning’s Booked to Die, men abuse and murder women and each other, brothers and sisters cordially loathe each other; Cliff Janeway, book-loving cop protagonist, beats his antagonist nearly to death – justifiably, of course, for the antagonist is a bully who likes to beat up women. Just another few days in America, full
The Haunted Bookshop I: Innocents at the Bookshop Read More »