“Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it. I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought. In a rush of […]
“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. ‘Something cannot emerge from nothing,’ he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable ‘the truth’ can be.” ––Dune, by Frank Herbert, loc. 4259 “The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in […]
Family Furnishings is my second foray into the mind of Alice Munro, but will certainly not be my last. Munro writes the best prose––and the best short stories––of any modern author with whom I am familiar. Her disarmingly prosaic and delectably mysterious tales unveil the hidden meanings lurking within the mundane corners of everyday existence. After […]
“One night somebody asked, when is the best time in a man’s life? Some said, it’s when you are a kid and can fool around all the time and go down to the river in the summer and play hockey on the road in the winter and that’s all you think about, fooling around and […]
“It’s what happen at home that you try to protect, as best you can, for as long as you can.” ––Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-2014, by Alice Munro, pg. 303 “We childless ones, whether through bravery or cowardice, constitute a kind of existential vanguard, forced by our own choices to face the naked question […]
“I think the future of something we may no longer call feminism must include a deeper inquiry into men,” writes Rebecca Solnit in the closing pages of Men Explain Things to Me. “Feminism sought and seeks to change the whole human world; many men are on board with the project, but how it benefits men, […]
“I argued that you don’t know if your actions are futile; that you don’t have the memory of the future; that the future is indeed dark, which is the best thing it could be; and that, in the end, we always act in the dark. The effects of your actions may unfold in ways you […]
Three years ago, my father pointed me toward a frightfully thick book called Cryptonomicon that permanently rearranged my relationship with modern fiction. Since that first taste, Neal Stephenson has challenged me in every way an author can (including nearly boring me to death). Stephenson looms larger in my literary pantheon––and weighs more heavily on my […]
“‘We need brains, is the bottom line,’ Ivy said. ‘We’re not hunter-gatherers anymore. We’re all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn’t bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It’s our ability to master complex technological skills. […]
“‘All I’m saying is that if you’ve gone where I’ve already gone, in terms of thinking about that––’ ‘If you’ve drunk the Singularity Kool-Aid, in other words?’ Doob said. ‘Yeah, Doob, as you know I’ve already done, then you’ve already made a fundamental break with trying to be Nature Boy. I am never going to […]