Book review: The poetry of “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville
One of the great pleasures of reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is his wondrously muscular prose. So thick with meaning and image, so meaty with psychological insight, so dense and [...]
One of the great pleasures of reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is his wondrously muscular prose. So thick with meaning and image, so meaty with psychological insight, so dense and [...]
Out of the blue By Patrick T. Reardon Sure, paint the door with blood and get a pass. But, tomorrow, Death’s angel will again be on the lookout. Sure, read [...]
The United States is an exceptional country, and it stands as a shining city upon a hill as a model of freedom to the rest of the world. That’s the [...]
Photograph: Bullet Through Apple By Patrick T. Reardon The dark fashioned metal beyond impact, its line still true. The fruit drawn to the left as if it would follow. The [...]
Terry Pratchett, whose life was cut short in 2015 by Alzheimer’s disease, thought much about death during his 66 years. And, in his 41 hilarious, witty and silly Discworld fantasy [...]
Unlearning with Hannah Arendt by Marie Luise Knott is a sparse, poetic examination of a profound and humane 20th century thinker who was deeply learned, richly insightful and, above all, [...]
No Clouds The moon is a silver weight. A man walks his dog and smokes. Tides pull. The trees are saints: the old, the tested, those at peace. Patrick T. [...]
The title of Elmore Leonard’s 1979 western Gunsights is a play on words although the reader doesn’t find that out until the plot twist on the novel’s final page. The [...]
Elmore Leonard writes amiable novels that tend to meander along until one of his dopey characters — all of his characters are, like humans, pretty dopey — breaks into violence [...]
Ken Krimstein’s 2018 graphic biography of Jewish-German-French-American philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt is titled The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth. The cover with its three [...]