The most well-known clip from Buster Keaton’s long career comes from the final act of his 1928 feature Steamboat Bill, Jr. In the midst of hurricane-force winds, Keaton stands with his back to a house. The home’s two-ton façade falls away, and Keaton—surely to be crushed—is spared by an open second-floor window that seems impossibly […]
I feel a sudden rush of triumph, like I have witnessed something noteworthy—even if I am the only one scribbling notes.
Almost all the Highland Games’ events involve throwing things that should really be left alone. There’s the Hammer Throw, the Stone Putt, the Braemar Stone Putt (like the Stone Putt but with feet planted), the Weight Throw (a lead weight attached to a handle with a chain), Weight Over the Bar (a small anvil thrown […]
“I am what is known as a fifth wheel,” the narrator confesses, “a useless piece of paraphernalia carried along as a necessary impedimenta on other people’s journeys.”
Maybe it’s just my age—maybe I’m just a grumpy old man—but for me the expression “third wheel” ranks right up there with “I could care less” in my list of cringe-inducing misuses of language. I keep hearing it, especially in the context of romance. When a young person is invited along on someone else’s date, […]
In this age of new media and dying dailies, Shrdlu’s name is as archaic as newsprint slapping concrete in the pre-dawn hours.
Today he is all but forgotten, but there was a time when Etaoin Shrdlu showed up daily in newspapers across the U.S. His name most often appeared in the dense columns of classified ads or in business listings, but it also popped up in stories about political intrigue, society soirees and gruesome crimes. In 1922, […]
Deep Waters: A Review of Diane Setterfield’s Once Upon a River
Once Upon a River keeps us poised on that porous border between the mundane and the magical.
Diane Setterfield’s atmospheric and entirely-charming new novel, Once Upon a River, released this week by Emily Bestler Books, takes place in the mid-19th century, an age suspended between Darwin and divination. The Swan is a village pub along the Thames where storytellers gather to rehearse and hone their craft. They shape the unwieldy truth into […]
But the truth is, I feel a heavy sense of loss. I’ve gotten so used to miracles not happening that I no longer live as if they might.
It was just after dinner on a weeknight in 1981 when my best friend Tom called me on the phone to ask if I’d be his wingman on an exorcism. Tom had been my freshman college roommate. He’d left college after a single year to marry his high-school sweetheart. A part-time seminary student, he worked […]
Overdue: A Review of Susan Orlean’s The Library Book
Thank God for Susan Orlean’s crazy courage and this precious, foolish, brave book she’s given us.
When Susan Orlean’s new book arrives next week at my branch library, it will be assigned the Dewey decimal number 027.4794, which puts it in class 000, the designation for Computer Science, Information & General Works. More specifically it will be shelved in the General Libraries section of the Library & Information Sciences subclass. I […]
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