January 2024
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Many years ago, in what sometimes seems like an earlier life, I taught Shakespeare courses to both young and "mature" students. When we reached Othello, halfway through the semester, I would, of course, point out that the play did not take the traditional form of tragedy– of a great man or king gone awry as in…
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"Joint" is a word that in the course of my lifetime has engaged in some serious shape-shifting. When I first encountered the word, joint (derived from the Latin jungere, to join) was simply a place where two pieces of wood were glued together or where one's bones were articulated to produce a wrist, elbow, or…
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I read Felipe Alou's autobiography, My Baseball Journey (2018). It's not a literary masterpiece, but nevertheless a solid book that "does the job." It's particularly valuable for its story of the brutalities faced by a black Dominican pioneer coming to segregated America in the early '50s. A good reminder of a part of our ugly…
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It's that time of year once again — time to get 2024 out of the starting gates with force and vigor. I'm all into self-improvement, as everyone knows. So here are my resolutions. 1). Sleep longer, and stay in bed later in the morning. No need to bounce out of bed. It's warm and cozy…
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To most readers of this blague, Norman Podhoretz is a nonentity, but for a while there, he was a big deal in certain intellectual circles. His youthful autobiography, Making It (1967), elicited howls of indignation. Nowadays, it's impossible not to read Making It retrospectively, because it's undeniable that the author, who began life as liberal…