• Letter of the Week

    This week’s “Letter of the Week” award goes to Loyal Reader Accused of Lurking, commenting on last week’s very exciting post, “The roads less traveled.” (You did know there’s a “Letter of the Week” competition, didn’t you? It’s a fierce ideological food fight featuring plenty of that groupie-on-groupie violence you…

  • The roads less traveled

    John Updike once wrote an essay about unread books and their migration route inside his house. They began with great expectations on the table by the front door, levitated to the top of the television, summited a bookcase, fluttered into the kitchen, made a break up the stairs, loitered on…

  • What this country needs is a mighty woman with a torch

    If you were hiring for your company and the leading applicant was accused by several women of sexual assault, and had been rumored to engage in demolition drinking, and who, when questioned about these matters, threw a tantrum, and even if all these charges could not be corroborated and were…

  • If you find America, bring me back a Slurpee

    People give me things. Gift certificates, books, meals, ceramic corgi figures, opinions. On my 50th birthday, whooping cough. Recently, two people gave me a stack of CDs. Because one of these two people is my boss, I will refer to them by the code names I just invented: Thing 1…

  • I’ve been loving you too long

    How many times have you danced to “Respect”? How many times have you thrilled to hear Aretha say “I tell you girls,” even if you aren’t a girl? And how many times have you gone to YouTube to watch not The Blues Brothers but that scene in the café where…