There are phrases that ring through history like bells tolling in fog: ‘Et tu, Brute?’, ‘I have a dream,’ ‘Father, forgive them.’ Yesterday another such phrase was spoken - not in marble halls nor on the steps of Washington, but from a widow’s lips at her husband’s memorial service. Erika Kirk stood before the world, … Continue reading ‘I Forgive’: A Widow at the Crossroads of Rage and Grace
Tag: Writing
Death on the Installment Plan: A Comedy of Filth and Futility
Life, says Céline, isn’t a banquet but a butcher’s stall, and each of us is the meat on the hook, dripping away one grey day at a time. Death on the Installment Plan isn’t a novel so much as a splatter of bile, a confession delivered in hysterics, punctuated with ellipses… ellipses… until the very … Continue reading Death on the Installment Plan: A Comedy of Filth and Futility
How Much Land Does a Man Need? – Tolstoy’s Six-Foot Sermon
Tolstoy was always the moralist disguised as a storyteller. He couldn’t so much as describe a hayfield without planting in it a parable, and How Much Land Does a Man Need? is among his most ruthless little lessons. At its heart, it’s an absurdly simple tale: a peasant named Pahom believes that with just a … Continue reading How Much Land Does a Man Need? – Tolstoy’s Six-Foot Sermon
We: A Sermon in Glass and Giggles
f you ever wake up in the morning and think, 'Life would be so much better if everyone behaved exactly the same,' then I recommend you either take a cold shower, or read Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. For here's a book that takes the notion of a perfectly ordered society and runs it to its logical conclusion … Continue reading We: A Sermon in Glass and Giggles
Anno Dracula: Empire of the Undead
What if the monster had won? It’s the forbidden question behind so much of Gothic literature. We tidy our novels with the crucifix triumphant and the stake neatly driven home, as if evil may always be dispatched with a mallet and a bit of ash. Yet Kim Newman, that merry necromancer of the imagination, dared … Continue reading Anno Dracula: Empire of the Undead
Wording 