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I have way too many books on my shelf. About a week ago, already neck deep in Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs and a re-read of Eric Foner’s short history of Reconstruction,1 I decided to buy a handful of books by John Ashbery, moved to action by his
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When you consider something historically, it’s important to avoid the tempting “What if…” construct of inevitability. “Could _____ have been avoided?” Is a question, sure, and something you can think about, it’s just not a legitimate historical inquiry. Everything is inevitable because it happened. When 24 year-old Buffalo Bills
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Conversation Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe present is a world because the public arrives at a natural corner, new styles in stone on the beach. This is a utopia. It’s just haunted. Wake up. Or has my clothing lost you to your manuals?
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By the time he’d reached the age of 20 in the early 1880s, Evander Berry Wall, the grandson of a successful rope manufacturer, had inherited more than $2 million and was emerging as a prominent member of New York’s cafe society. He owned horses, dined exclusively at the
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Today I’m announcing a new thing: Tuesday Subscriber Chat. I’m still working out the kinks, but Substack describes this feature as: A conversation space in the Substack app, exclusively for my subscribers — kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I have designs on stuff like baseball
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Note: This is another essay I wrote for work. There’s no shortage of aphorisms about failure. Writers, artists, politicians, athletes, and most everyone who’s ever pursued anything of substance or value (at least perceived) has faced the existential prospect of falling short. Most sum up their experiences with
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Funny story, having taken a blog break, I decided to abandon the arbitrary numbering system I’d been using on my posts and just keep a regular count. It turns out this is #101, at least on Substack. In an interview following the release of the film Inherent Vice, director
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Debt Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedShadows have worn the pavement down like wind and rain in the parking lot of a gas station in the town where I was born. Where the birds flit fitful in skeletal grasses, dirty and desperate, clinging to an
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It would be pretty arrogant of me to suggest that any of you noticed that I haven’t finished the poem month. That said, I committed to it, and I fell a few days short. I’m sorry. I hope you read one or two things you liked. In closing
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Hamlet
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Winter, by Billy Collins
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The Melon, by Charles Simic