Latest work
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Luck
Read more: LuckKeep it slow… Early into an article about upheaval in the American book industry comes this line: “The metabolism of the culture has sped up in the digital age.” Then this one: “Fueled by a convergence of spectacularly dramatic news events, publishers are hitting the fast-forward button.” In case you’re…
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Paleontology
Read more: PaleontologyMy very own funicular. Iwanted to be a paleontologist. In fact I wanted to be all words I couldn’t spell, particularly if they involved reptiles or ships. When I didn’t want to be a paleontologist I wanted to be a builder of funiculars, a self-styled vocation that led to people…
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Endgame
Read more: EndgameWhen newspapers mattered… Newspapers are dying. Their fate recalls that of transatlantic luxury liner travel in the decade between 1955 and 1965. In 1955, Atlantic air travel was promising but still cumbersome: flights between New York and London involved at least two stops (usually Gander and Shannon) and a day…
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Moonless
Read more: MoonlessThe “rival cult” … In mid-1989, American political theorist Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay called “The End of History” in which he claimed Western liberal democracy was poised to personify the “universal homogenous state,” something French Hegelian intellectual Alexandre Kojève had predicted as inevitable in 1930s. Beaten was Marxism-Leninism, capitalism’s…
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Icky
Read more: IckyIn a galaxy far, far away… Eight times in the winter of 1964 my elementary school class carried out civil defense drills, trudging downstairs to basement fall out shelters. Each time a boy named Blaise de Montgrel (known as “The Mongrel”) tugged on my belt hoping to make my already…
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Black I
Read more: Black IWell-crafted diaries were available to literature. As an adult-in-training I was judiciously steered from using the first person. Putting raw sentiment ahead of conversant poise sabotaged good judgment. Journalism was particularly severe. Aside from column work, the “I” was taboo. The first person was reserved for massacres in which the…
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