Category: censored opinions
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Casual Vacancy, Pop Fic & Rowling’s Intentions
Though I’ve yet to read The Casual Vacancy, I’m surprised at how often reviewers talk of Rowling as if she was born to tell kiddie lit alone. Last time I checked, Harry Potter fell into her lap. She intended to write for adults. In other words, I think of her as a literary author who…
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On Reflection
I’ve never been one to slog through enormous philosophical tomes, but were I to ever trudge through something that thick, I think I’d pick Aids to Reflection by Coleridge. Don’t get me wrong, I would probably enjoy a conversation with diehard fans of Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Barth. However, I’ve merely sampled them like most of us—I’m…
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Guest Post: “Cheese” by G.K. Chesterton
Today I’m happy to welcome G.K. Chesterton to speak to us on Cheese. Take it away, G.K.! Cheers, Lancelot. My forthcoming work in five volumes, The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature,’ is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from…
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Two Approaches to Art
If art’s an island, then you can get to her by two approaches. The first is the most common direction, the direction that seems most obvious, the broad way. Everyone who survived this direction once erected a lighthouse to persuade people from all over to enter by that side of the island. That house, if…
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Rabid and Danse Macbre
Over break, I started Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus and I must say it’s one of the most brutal pieces of nonfiction to cross my desk. Wasik and Murphy headed up a research team for years, digging into the origins of the disease that took down Old Yeller. (Sorry to…
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Mosque Burning and Neighbor Love : The Other Side
On Monday, my local Joplin neighbors witnessed a mosque burning to the ground. Authorities suspect foul play. This is the second time the mosque has been on fire this summer, the first happened on — you guessed it — July 4th. The Joplin Globe featured a picture of Imam Lahmuddin weeping, adding in a sidebar…
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A Near-Death Experience for Poetry
Our nation’s in crisis and doesn’t even know it. “What are you talking about, Lance, of course they–” Not like that. The moment you ruin funding for the arts, the moment music becomes an elective, the moment you have more copywriters than poets, you start down into absurdity. The poets are always the first to…
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Bad Thinking: “Wait Until You Have Something to Say”
There’s a rotten thought running around lecture halls, councils and writing groups these days. That idea goes like this: “You’ve nothing to say when you’re young. Wait until you’ve lived a little, then you’ll have something to say.” People tell themselves this while staring into the mirror or preach this to others all the time. I…
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Concerning Criticism
One way we censor opinions in this culture is through our aversion to criticism. We dress up our true opinions more from fear of loosing friends and of being real than we are of being mean. We think that people won’t like us if we share our honest feelings–perhaps that’s why most fiction writers are…
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Free Lance Friday!
Freelance isn’t free. Except for today. Today’s the day where all of you nervous people come out of hiding and send me work. Then I send it back completed, free of charge. You send me a story or paper, I edit. You send me a copywriting gig, I write. You send me a story that…
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My Top 10 Movies of All Time… as of yesterday
Flickchart liberates and frustrates. It frees us if three movies are all five-star movies. We can discover the champ. However it presents two problems: (1) people like me don’t have time to rank ten-thousand times and so establish normalcy on their flickchart and (2) it seems every third movie I add to the list changes up…
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Q & A
The following questions landed some people here this month. I will attempt to answer them to the best of my inability: Why does the Deathly Hallows logo look like the all seeing eye? Because it is one. I would highly recommend checking out John Granger’s work The Deathly Hallows Lectures What did Joseph Campbell say…