Some books are so indispensable that you own them, even in the Internet age. Some books are so valuable that if one is misplaced you’ll replace it. This must have happened with The Elements of Style, which my generation called “the Strunk and White” for E.B. White, who in 1957 “tampered” slightly with the self-published […]
(Gunky being the term for the particular mental illness in the family of the dead husband of the protagonist in Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story. I picked its CD version for the commute thinking it was King’s fully formed portrait of a resourceful woman who survives a challenging life, and it is, but her challenges include […]
Let us praise World Bank prez Paul Wolfowitz, not Clintonize him. The Wall Street Journal and other leading news media report that the former Pentagon official has steered his close female friend Shaha Riza to a good job down at the store, not to mention security clearance. Did someone say clearance, as in sale? Wolfowitz […]
Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock “In light that your entire talk focused on the importance of the imagination and getting at truth through invention, Mr. Rushdie, would you analyze, discuss or comment on the widespread public infatuation with memoir?” The UA moderator cut the 15 minutes of Q-and-A precisely. I wasn’t next at the microphone […]
On April 18, 1945, a Japanese sniper took out Ernie Pyle during a Pacific Island skirmish. Pyle was a beloved newspaperman, whose columns were anticipated by millions of readers of hundreds of newspapers. You couldn’t say that about a lot of journalists then, much less now. Most war reporting was conducted at the officer level, […]
The first-day coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings was, compared to most similar events, surprisingly restrained. CNN was unbearably repetitive. I couldn’t see more than five minutes at a time, due to impatience, but wasn’t it wonderful that the cable news station of excess kept guesswork and pseudo-psycho-pap about the shooter to a minimum. But […]