Listen, My Children...

Devil's Dictionary

Someone once said he was thinking of putting the Devil's Dictionary on his blog. In the absence of that blog, perhaps Waking Ambrose may fill the gap.

Small Fable/Kleine Fabel

"Ach," sagte die Maus, "die Welt wird enger mit jedem Tag. Zuerst war sie so breit, daß ich Angst hatte, ich lief weiter und war glücklich, daß ich endlich rechts und links in der Ferne Mauern sah, aber diese langen Mauern eilen so schnell aufeinander zu, daß ich schon im letzten Zimmer bin, und dort im Winkel steht die Falle, in die ich laufe." "Du mußt nur die Laufrichtung ändern," sagte die Katze und fraß sie.

Small Fable
"Alas," said the mouse, "the world becomes narrower day by day. At first it was so wide that I was afraid, I ran further and was happy to see walls at last, to the right and left in the distance, but these long walls hurry so quickly towards each other that I am already in the last room, and there in the corner stands the trap into which I run." "You only need to change the direction you are running," said the cat, and gobbled it up.

--Kafka

On Tom Wolfes

Amidst all the hullaballoo about Tom Wolfe's birthday, let's not forget another author by the same name.

I have never come across a finer writer. Several years ago, my mother gave me You Can't Go Home Again. I was not attracted by the storyline, and I forced my way through half of the book before putting it down. Five years later, every detail is still fresh, every image is still vivid. I still don't like the story -- I prefer sweet fluff or biting satire -- but I stand in awe of the man's skill with words. Rarely have I come across anyone who even came close.

Congratulations!

Josh Chafetz has a book deal!

Borders Transformed?

According to Ann Althouse, Borders is now displaying a range of books. That's as it may be; but the regular new-books stores I visited in Berkeley haven't yet made that change. In two of the three, they did have Ann Coulter's newest (but no others, no O'Neill, and no Hannity), spine out, next to your regular anti-Bush variety, cover out. The third had no big-name conservative books at all, but did have several copies of MoveOn.org's book -- and set out individually, not stacked, so "lack of space for diversity" isn't an excuse. I haven't read any of the books from either side (preferring to spend time reading about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British courtesans), but I'm aware that many people do, and that many people base their opinions on such books. If people have easy walk-in-and-buy-it (and read-it-in-your-local-paper) access to only one side, isn't it possible that they'd be like my teacher from this summer, and many other sensible and intelligent Indians? They got all their news about America from the Guardian's columns in The Hindu, and they'd never thought there would be reason to doubt that source of information, so they took everything as complete truth and were remarkably misinformed. If I'd had only my mother's advice to go on, I'd never have learned the joys of sushi; if I'd listened only to my grandfather's opinion, drawn from unimpeachable first-hand experience (and if he hadn't made it clear that we were to decide for ourselves and not let his horrid experiences colour our opinions), I'd never have learned that modern-day Japanese people are somewhat different from those of sixty years ago. But if only one viewpoint is available, there's not much hope for the marginally-interested to know much of anything.

Wow.

Tweef. Just when I thought I'd read it all.... Josh analyzes the funny pages.