pay a little

Why pay a little when you can pay a lot? Right. Sincerely, if anyone is interested in a $10 shipped paperback copy of Auggie's Revenge or slightly more for Fight for Your Long Day, I may well be able to deliver.

anything other than indigestible

"[H.L.] Mencken, who at no time in his life found [Henry] James's prose to be anything other than indigestible, fired back with the brassy self-confidence of a self-made man whose style owed nothing to The Wings of the Dove and everything to Huckleberry Finn: 'The average newspaper reporter writes better English than Henry, if good English means clear, comprehensible English. . . . Take any considerable sentence from any of his novels and examine its architecture. Isn't it wobbly with qualifying clauses and subassistant phrases? Doesn't it wriggle and stumble and stagger and flounder? Isn't it "crude, untidy, careless," bedraggled, loose, frowsy, disorderly, unkempt, uncombed, uncurried, unbrushed, unscrubbed? Doesn't it begin in the middle and work away from both ends? Doesn't it often bounce along for a while and then, of a sudden, roll up its eyes and go out of business entirely?'"

~~ from The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken by Terry Teachout

AWP, the unaffordable conference

If money's tight, it's highly possible I could send you a copy of Auggie's Revenge for ten dollars—including shipping—or possibly less. Find me on social media and send a private message.

#AWP2026

As AWP in Baltimore approaches, it is only by coincidence, but I seem to be reading Terry Teachout's biography of one of city's most famous literary sons: Henry Louis Mencken. So far, it's good.

Close Encounters

Befriend Luke and Leia 

  Or Mork and Mindy, 

Lois Lane and Clark Kent,

  Or Close Encounters windy.

dogs, too, changed our lives

"Owning a dog was for most people a commonplace--completely unremarkable. For us, having a dog marked a dramatic new direction. Months earlier it would have been unthinkable, an irresponsible indulgence, derided and ridiculed. The time it takes you to walk that damn dog is time stolen from organizing, a comrade might have said, and another would have added, The food that thing eats could feed five Vietnamese for a week. But now, whenever Jeffrey showed up with Red Dog, someone, or several people together, would romp around with him in dizzy excitement. It was strange, but the dogs, too, changed our lives."

~~ from Fugitive Days: A Memoir by Bill Ayers