December 2008
7 posts
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Man's hard lesson
Mr. Watson’s queer laugh come all the way up from his boots, and that laugh taught me once and for all this man’s hard lesson, that our human free-for-all on God’s sweet earth never meant more’n a hatch of insects in the thin smoke of their millions rising and falling in the river twilight.
[Watson finishes a story about forgiveness]
Shadow Country | Peter Mattheissen
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A low moaning sound
I wondered then and often afterwards how the Afghans endured the pain, there was so much of it. Five years in the rubble with nine fingers and five children and one leg and no husband: surely a pain proportional to injury would not in its mercy allow a woman like Shah Kukhu to survive. Forty thousand dead in the capital with no electricity. Two-year-old babies with artificial legs. They screamed,...
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An octogenarian's rebuke
This book is nonsense. It’s meant to be. If I were a “serious” writer, which I’m not (I have the word of an eminent critic for this, and I know he meant it as a compliment, because he put the word in quotes) I might describe it as an octogenarian’s rebuke to a generation which seems to have forgotten fun and become obsessed with misery, disaster, illness, operations,...
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“Fair Sir God, I pray you to do by La Hire as he would do by you if you were La...”
– Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc | Mark Twain
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Let's just everybody sit down
Neal looked at the woman who had just spoken, and couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed her standing in the doorway. She was a lovely woman and she stood framed in the doorway just a second longer than necessary to let Neal realize that she was a lovely woman. She’s made such entrances into this room before, Neal thought. She used the door frame like Bacall used a movie screen, but...
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The other fellow
So, without demur, they joined the party in my rooms, one of the last of the old kind that I gave. Rex Mottram exerted himself to make an impression. He was a handsome fellow with dark hair growing low on his forehead and heavy black eyebrows. He spoke with an engaging Canadian accent. One quickly learned all he wished one to know about him, that he was a lucky man with money, a member of...