Latest work
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Crowpid Ledge
Read more: Crowpid LedgeTintin, protector of only children. Ilearned the word “unbeknownst” at age 10. It meant to climb to the roof at midnight but tell no one. My father gave it away when he pointed at the roof and told a visitor, “Unbeknownst to me, at night, squirrels.” I decided the squirrels…
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Havel
Read more: HavelVáclav Havel: An intellectual trapped inside a president. Reverence can falter up close. Jonathan Swift, a great debunker, focused on creases and warts. In Václav Havel I saw a slouched one-lunged playwright tucked awkwardly into a presidential business suit. The year before, in 1999, I’d met Pope John Paul II…
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Broken toy
Read more: Broken toyMission accomplished when it wasn’t, and couldn’t be. That the United States would attack Iraq became clear to me in late summer 2002 while reading a front-page newspaper report in which American government sources anonymously insisted that Saddam Hussein posed a menace to both West and world. The sources connected…
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Amici come prima
Read more: Amici come primaDino Buzzati (1902-1972) worked for Milan’s Corriere della Sera. My favorite Italian work of fiction is a nine-page short story written by Dino Buzzati in 1971, a year before his death. Buzzati was an Italian journalist from Belluno, near Venice, who studied law only to become a lifelong newspaper correspondent.…
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View
Read more: ViewCrane no. 2: For the zoo? A museum? From my bedroom window, in the distance, I can see two construction cranes, and, more nearby, an unfinished but empty apartment, its wrap-around balcony tended to by loudly diligent gardeners who fuss over the well-groomed shrubbery at least twice a month. They…
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Blood money
Read more: Blood moneyFrench 1920s poster: “The Real Social Enemy is the Capitalist Who Tramples the People and Grabs the Gold.” Alsop Osterman and Marcel Dunot were convinced they knew a thing or two about Europe. German instigator Osterman doubted British intentions while gallant French boxer Dunot lifted his fists against the foes…
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