Category: literature
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Saints of the Plagues
In the time of the coronavirus, people of virtue and morality — particularly Christians and post-Christians — search for meaning and a proper response: for the saints of the plagues to emerge. Tara and I often find that the best way forward is backwards. That is, to give the democracy of the dead a vote in how…
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Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
Author Irène Némirovsky penned the following lines in her journal: “My God! What is this country doing to me? Since it is rejecting me, let us consider it coldly, let us watch as it loses its honour and its life.” She wrote this a year into the German occupation of France during World War II…
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12 Years a Librarian
In June of 2019 I finished 12 years and begin my 13th year as a librarian at Queens Library, my eighth year serving as a supervisor. With this milestone I believe I am accomplishing one of the pillars of a human being’s life journey: finding meaningful work. We all know the game of information seeking…
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Finishing Strong Stories in Avengers Endgame
Finishing strong stories came up over and again in Avengers Endgame. It makes sense considering the question at hand: how do superheroes retire? Morally, it seems, if they plan to end well. For power, money, pleasure, and honor remain insufficient — even now with great power, great money, great pleasure, great honor comes still greater…
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Generational Culture — films, novels, and the rest
My friend Chad wrote a post about generational culture in hopes to pick a film for every generation. As we texted back and forth with our friend Doug, we realized that a single film might not define a generation so much as a bank of films or even a bank of cultural touchstones. So after…
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The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The first lines of a work are important. They get the piece moving, they set the tone for the work, they introduce us to the authorial voice. Think of some of the most memorable first lines. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”[1] “Call me Ishmael.”[2] “It is a truth universally acknowledged,…
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The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
“Ivan’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” I underlined that sentence when I first read the novella The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy about a year and a half ago. I was prepping for a new World Literature class that I was soon to teach, and I…
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Man and Serpent by Aesop
Today for Myths, Legends, Folklore and Tall Tales, we’re reading Man and Serpent by Aesop. Myths, Legends, Folklore and Tall Tales is another one of my podcasts featuring bedtime story readings — in this case the myths, legends, folklore and tall tales of the world. Now and again, I read one of my own stories…
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545 literary agents NYC folk use
As I’m finishing up my fifth novel, the time has come for me to search once more for literary agents and most of them are literary agents NYC folk love and use often. It seems kind of pointless for me to put in all of this work to find literary agents NYC folk prefer and…
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Epic of Gilgamesh Review
I grew overwhelmed over the past few years with how many books I’ve read and I thought I needed to write drawn out reviews for everything. That’s not so true: short reviews work just as well and that’s just as true for this Epic of Gilgamesh review. The things that struck me most about this…
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Naughty or Nice — the metaphysics of Santa’s List
Turns out Santa Claus is a privationist. And assuming Santa’s privationist sensibilities can explain why coal for the naughty truly is a gift and not a punishment. Or at very least, as Tolkien would ask, “Which of God’s judgements are not also gifts?” Coal is a grace, even a sort of Christmas sacrament. Here’s how…
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Harry Potter Pumpkin Carving
Wanted you guys to see my Harry Potter pumpkin carving that i did while watching Sleepy Hollow at my friend’s house: