February 2008
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I had trace memory only of Delmer Daves' 1957 3:10 to Yuma, a film that I had not seen since the days of my youth. In my mind it was bracketed with a much better morality-play western, High Noon (1952). I am, frankly, a little vain that I was able to recall that Van Heflin…
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Philip Roth's American Pastoral (1997) attacked home-grown resistance to the Vietnam war and featured a child of unparalleled wickedness named Merry Levov. I've now read I Married a Communist (1999) which ridicules the post-World War II political left and gives prominence to an even more horrible demon-daughter. This time it's Sylphid Pennington, an Iago-strength villain,…
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Your “mature” brain has mind of its own. It is intermittently balky and stubborn, reluctant to yield up its stored data. Many years ago I memorized a few of John Milton’s sonnets. These poems are not only noble and politically engaged, they are also reflective, immaculately crafted, challenging, and melodious — as good as any…
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We watched, don't ask me why, the most recent Jason Bourne extravaganza — The Bourne Hyperventilation I believe it was called. So-called "action" pictures are not my cup of tea. In my view, it's a genre that is far too deeply infatuated with its own cliches. The Bourne Mystification was not only prefamiliar but also…
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This pretty six-line poem is not nearly as naive as it first appears. But it's a poem to savor and one that has richly earned its place in the anthologies. It's often, mistakenly in my opinion, listed among the best "love poems" in the English language. Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks,…
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A couple of months ago, when I had journeyed through roughly half of his writings, I made some preliminary observations about the fictional world invented by Philip Roth. In the course of discussion, I advanced two hypotheses. The first was that Roth hated children, whom he regarded as encumbrances to male freedom and pleasure. The…
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HRC, who is essentially a centrist Democrat, is widely perceived as a divisive and polarizing figure. Why so? Because she's a woman, because she's married to Bill, but mostly because for twenty years now, unscrupulous Republicans have been investigating, castigating, and smearing her. Is there a more vilified politician in the world? She's a murderess,…
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The big news is that our caucus drew unprecedented hordes of voters. Our site is the local elementary school. We’re a "super-site" — seven precincts in one building. In the past, we’d have ten or a dozen or at an absolute maximum thirty attendees per precinct. Tonight, at 7pm, when we were supposed to come…
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This post is written for members of the directionally dyslexic community. Non-members are welcome to read but they probably won’t get it. Some cities are easy to navigate; others are nightmares. In the small western city where I live, the mountains are always visible, and they’re always, blessedly, to the west. In addition, the streets…