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Artful Interview: Dickens at 200
This month – February 8 specifically – beloved novelist and writer Charles Dickens would have celebrated his 200th birthday – if he had not, you know, died back in 1870. In honor of that distinction,...
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Obama’s War Crimes
High crimes. President George W. Bush committed war crimes during his presidency. How do we know this? One way is because Bush boasted about violating the Geneva Conventions and sanctioning...
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The Bible’s Unimpressive Miracles
Do not taunt the Son of Man. God created everything, according to the Bible. The first sentence tells us so: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) Genesis goes on to...
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The Old Lady & the Angry Dog
Short Story: “The Vendetta” by Guy de Maupassant Guy de Maupassant is often considered the French Edgar Allan Poe. This is unfair to Maupassant, a far superior writer. But the comparisons are...
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Dharma Bumming
I’ve been rediscovering the Beats recently. It has been, after all, 15 years this month since Allen Ginsberg died. My second going with the Beats (my first when I was in college) has not been as...
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Unmerciful Yates
One of Americas most under appreciated writers – at least by readers – is Richard Yates. None of his novels were ever best sellers and, in fact, none of them sold more than a few thousands copies...
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Daughters
Hidden behind a pane of smeared glass. Father. In a messy kitchen, gazing out over the brick patio scattered with pine needles and twigs. There behind the white picket fence. Flashes of barefoot...
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10 Scathing Literary Insults
A zinger is so much more satisfying when it’s not only scathing, but clever. Take Dorothy Parker as she nearly collided with Clare Boothe Luce as they both tried to get through a doorway. Luce smiled...
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Gentlemen & Drinking Establishments
From Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations”: “‘Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I. ‘Not on any account,’ returned Herbert; ‘but a public-house many keep a gentleman.’” Whew!
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Travis McGee & the 2008 Financial Crash
From the 1979 Travis McGee novel “The Green Ripper” by John D. MacDonald: “‘How did the conference go?’ I asked. He shook his weary head. ‘These are bad days for an economist, my friend. We have gone...
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5 Great Books About the End of the World
It’s coming on Thursday. Doomsday. Well, maybe not the true “End of the World,” but financial collapse and the end of our collective 401(K) plans. Hopefully, the less extreme elements of the...
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6 Books I’ve Read 3 Times
I don’t often read books more than once. There is only so much time, after all, and so many damn good books. So why keep going back to the same well? That said I am guilty of reading six books three...
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Dickens vs. “Entrepreneurs”
From Charles Dickens’ “Hard Times”: “This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty...
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Snow-Flakes on a Cold Winter Morning
It was minus nine degrees when I woke this morning. My street caked with ice and snow after a 24-hour storm dumped more than a foot on Massachusetts. While I brewed a cup of coffee in my kitchen,...
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