The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
A Whale of a Prank
The Secret Hours is Like Gretchen Wiener's Hair: Full of Secrets
If you are a fan of Jackson Lamb and the show Slow Horses, then you need to read Mick Herron's standalone prequel The Secret Hours-- this book fills in a lot of the gaps and backstory of the misfit MI5 gang of Slough House and does it in brilliant fashion: the novel centers on a government inquiry into some wild and nasty business in Berlin just after the wall fell and the spies came out of the cold . . . and while it seems to be all codenames and obfuscation, if you're a fan you will start to recognize many of the characters and plot strands from the show . . . very entertaining and very illuminating but you certainly want to watch Slow Horses or read a few Slough House books before you dive into this one.
The Week Begins, as Literacy Ends
My Students Are Amazing (AI) Writers!
Earlier this week in my Creative Writing class we did an exercise where we voted on a topic and then everyone-- either alone or collaboratively-- wrote a piece on this topic, executing a particular literary technique . . . fun and simple and the topic the class chose was ripe for reflection: gossip . . . so once the kids finished, a student-- just a regular, run-of-the-mill standard sixteen-year-old-- read aloud his piece . . . and at the start there was some dialogue, which seemed a little too perfectly punctuated, and then he read aloud this symbolic sentence:
The weight of a secret, too heavy for two lips, was shared from hand to hand like a dog-eared book from the library—pages folded, words smudged, the original story lost.
and I played it cool (even though I knew no sixteen boy in 2025 would express such a sentiment in such a style) and I asked, with as much faux-sincerity as I could muster, just how he thought of such an interesting metaphor for a rumor-- a dog-eared library book--
and he said, "Oh, um . . . I didn't think of that part . . . my friend told me to write that"
and I said, "Is your friend named ChatGPT?"
and then when I was able to talk to him alone I asked him if he even knew what a dog-eared book was (he did not) and I told him to write his own stuff as it was insulting for me to have to read AI bullshit and he apologized and we left it at that and while I didn't want to embarrass him anymore than I already did, I loved the sentence so much that I used it as a cautionary example in my other classes-- so I read it to them and then I asked my students why this sentence set off so many AI alarm bells and the kids didn't fully understand so I had to explain to them that this metaphor was incredibly antiquated and specific and the best way I could explain it was that back when I was in elementary school-- Judd School-- our library had a copy of the Judy Blume book Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, and there's a part in the book where Margaret gets her period-- salacious!-- and someone would dog-ear this page (one of my students said she thought dog-earing a library book was a criminal act) and then pass the book along and the next person would be able to turn right to the salacious part and read it-- and explained to them that in 1982, a world without digital screens and cell-phones and readily-available smut on the internet, this is what passed for racy content . . . and the bizzaro ending to this story is that, despite all the readily available smut online, available at a moment's notice, one click away, Florida's Martin County banned a Judy Blume book (Forever) and so while this sounds problematic, it is Florida so what do you expect-- but when you ban something, it becomes more attractive (and more well known) and so maybe the ban will entice kids to read again and dog-ear some salacious pages and pass that book on, like a rumor, distorted, smudged, and heavy with secrets.
The Best Genre, Hands Down, Knives Out
Presidents' Day . . . Take It Easy
My wife and I did NOT buy a mattress on our day off today, but we did go to the gym (though my wife and I were both very sore from working out too hard yesterday and walking around like very old people) and then we went out to lunch, but while I took the next reasonable step in this progression and took a nap, my wife-- who was starting on this bent at lunch, showing me Pinterest pictures and saying things like "I work hard"--appeared in our bedroom while I was mid-nap . . . with a tape measure!-- she's got some grand plans for our bedroom, which I like to keep in the style of Jay Gatsby-- "the simplest room in the house"-- and while I already talked her out of a plant wall over our heads at lunch-- although I love a plant wall-- because I don't want a plant falling on me while I'm sleeping . . . and now I think she's calmed down for the time being and found a book to read on her Kindle and is getting into the spirit of a random day off.
Hump Day Existentialism
Today we started a new text in College Writing, a chapter from Rebecca Solnit's book Wanderlust entitled "The Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche" and so I took the kids through the myth of Sisyphus and how in Greek times, the Sisyphean task of rolling the boulder was punitive, but then how Camus adopted Sisyphus as the mascot of existentialism and the idea that "the realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning" and then I challenged the kids to come up with ideas of how our lives are absurd searches for meaning and identity because-- unlike back in the old days, when if your dad made barrels, then you were probably fated to make barrels . . . which, on the one hand is rather restrictive, but on the other hand, relieves you of a lot of doubt and anxiety-- but we are modern humans and our fate, according to Satre, is wide open and there's no higher power to guide us, so our existence precedes our essence, which he explains thusly:
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.
and then I challenged the students to come up with examples of how our lives are absurd searches for our essence-- but my examples were the best:
-- I'm going to Harvard to play football!
-- I just drove my car to the gym and I got so tired working out that I can't get any of this yard work done.
Unintentionally Dry January (But Not Sand Island Dry)
Dave Keeps Overdoing It (Physically and Literarily)
Medieval Times, Good Times?
Some Things That Are Completely Different
If you're looking for some batshit crazy apocalyptic sci-fi, I highly recommend Robert Charles Wilson's novel Spin-- I won't even try to explain all the consequences of the "spin membrane" that is mysteriously placed around the earth (by a mysterious superior alien race that scientists refer to as The Hypotheticals) but the stars go out early in the book and then some very well-depicted political and psychological and scientific chaos ensues-- and the book really makes you think about time, as a concept-- the book is the first in a trilogy (but apparently the other two books are not as good, so I'm going to skip them) and if you've read or watched The Expanse series then you'll find some familiar themes-- and if you're looking for a batshit crazy surreal almost sci-fi movie, you might like I Saw the TV Glow, a mesmerizing story about two disaffected teens in the 90's who share an obsession with a strange supernatural TV show called The Pink Opaque . . . the fictional world of the show begins to bleed into the "reality" of the of Owen and Maddy's constrained suburban lives-- and Maddy's complete and utter acceptance of this alternate reality sends her on a quest to find her true identity and gender, a quest that Owen is reluctant to embark on or even comprehend-- it'sa film full of weird imagery, awkward moments, and fragmented horror.
Let the Kids Have Their Memes
Yesterday in my English 12: Music and the Arts class we finished watching Exit Through the Gift Shop, a provocative film about the nature of art directed by Banksy-- an artistic agent provocateur-- and our discussion about the purpose, value, and definition of compelling art somehow led to the meme with the fiendishly grinning blue Grinch and the caption "that feeling when knee surgery is tomorrow"-- an absurdist bit of humor that makes about as much sense to me as when the students yell "pumpkin!" in class . . . and you could trace the origin of these memes and attempt to understand why Gen Z kids find them funny . . . or you could do what I did and decide to let them alone-- because memes are this generation's punk rock (or hip-hop or alternative rock or math rock or heavy metal or any of the many musical genres that my parents do not understand) and while there really hasn't been a new musical genre that only the youth listens to and understands-- in fact, most kids listen to pop music, rock music, and hip-hop, the same stuff folks my age were listening to when we were teenagers-- so the kids deserve to have their own weird universe of pop culture, that bewildered adults denigrate-- thus if you are over thirty, stop watching TikTok and trying to emulate the youth, and instead, read a fucking book.
Lord of the Flies is Lame (No Tanks)
If you think Lord of the Flies is a bit tame and you want a book where the kids really go bonkers then check out Cixin Liu's Supernova Era . . . a supernova eight light-years away unleashes a pulse of radiation that hits the Earth with delayed but deadly consequence-- leaving only children under thirteen immune to the eventual (9 months or so) chromosomal decay and death-- so as adults face imminent death, they race against time to train the kids to take over the planet-- and then the adults die and the kids act just like kids and utilize none of the wisdom passed to down to them and instead squander time and resources and engage in insane war games in a globally warmed Antarctica and then things get really batshit wild and the book addresses one of the truly unfair things about human life on planet earth-- the fact that where we are born very likely determines our destiny.
If You Don't Think Everything Sucks, You are the Victim of an Illusion
Gross Meatbag/Corporeal Irony!
Today in class, my College Writing students wrote a synthesis essay about the "Always Be Optimizing" chapter of the Jia Tolentino book Trick Mirror-- and while my colleague Cunningham wrote a wonderful prompt about how Tolentino describes women with an odd triad of imagery, as "gross meatbags, robots, and spiritual beings," I couldn't handle the term "gross meatbag"-- too visceral-- and so I changed it to the more academic-sounding "corporeal" and then told the children Cunningham's phrasing-- and there certainly is some "gross meatbag" imagery in this chapter, including a vivid account of a woman "queefing" in Tolentino's yoga class . . . so the kids had to write about the tension between these three portrayals of women and what it revealed about the world-- and, ironically, during last period, while I was robotically grading the previous class set of essays, and trying to inspire my current class to transcendent new heights of learning, the lunch of lentils, chicken, and cauliflower that my wife packed for me (which I had eaten an hour previous) made its way all the way through my corporeal digestive system, and so I had to make a hasty exit from class, quickly use the bathroom, and then return as though nothing unusual had happened . . . because, as I mentioned earlier, I don't like talking about that kind of gross meatbag stuff.
Go To Hell (Novelistically)
Horror Movies Have Rules, Don't They?
The first movie taught us how to survive a basic horror film . . .
Rule #1: Never have sex
Rule #2: Never drink or do drugs
Rule #3: Never ever say, “I’ll be right back”
the sequel, Scream 2, reminded us that things change in the sequel . . .
--The body count is always higher
--more blood and carnage
--Never assume the killer is dead
The killer is superhuman
Anyone, including the main character, can die
The past will come back to haunt you
Three Mysteries (Two Solved, One Pending)
Horowitz and meta-Horowitz Do It Again
I am a sucker for British mystery novels and a sucker for meta-fictional humor and in The Sentence of Death, Anthony Horowitz once again provides both-- it's the usual set-up, there's a murder-- a high-profile divorce lawyer is bludgeoned/sliced to death with a wine bottle and the police hire the rather unlikeable, rather shady, but incredibly brilliant ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne as a consultant to the case-- and the meta-fictional version of the actual author Anthony Horowitz tags along to document the case . . . Horowitz is pulled from on location of a shoot of the TV show Foyle's War-- a show that the real Horowitz actually created and wrote-- and now meta-Horowtiz is involved in a "real" mystery and a "real" murder . . . and while folks tolerate Hawthorne (barely) they are really annoyed that there's a writer shadowing Hawthorne, taking notes on all that is said-- so you get wonderful scenes, with layers of meta-fictional irony (amidst a complex mystery with loads of clues, characters, and red herrings) like this one, when possible suspect Akira Anno-- a celebrated poet and writer-- realizes that Horowitz is writing a book about this investigation, she says:
"He's putting me in his book? I don't want to be in his fucking book! I want a lawyer in this room. If he puts me in his book, I'll fucking sue him . . . this is a fucking outrage! I don't give him permission. Do you hear me? If he writes about me, I'll kill him!"
and for a moment, I was like: Oh shit, Horowitz put her in the book-- I wonder if she sued? and then, of course, I was like: but this is ALL made up . . . or mostly made up, not the Foyle's War stuff-- that's real-- and some of the other Horowitz stuff . . . but the Hawthorne stuff, that's all made up . . . good stuff Horowitz (and meta-Horowitz).
I Would Have Used the Word "mundane" (for obvious reasons)
You're going to feel one way or the other about Halle Butler's novel Banal Nightmare . . . the millennials that wander about this Midwestern college town are insufferable, trapped, and repetitive in a surreal No Exit sort of existential ennui-- but there is deep dark satirical humor amidst the emo-anguish and there is a beautiful cutting precision to Butler's language-- so if you like the following sentence, you'll like the book:
"There should be an Aesop's fable where a little ant jumps back and forth eternally between two spinning plates to teach us about the pitfalls of getting stuck in two conflicting and endlessly circular trains of thought, thought Moddie, but the only Aesop fable with ants, as far as she knew, was about how you deserved to die if you enjoyed your summer vacation."