Today’s Tom Sawyer
I can’t decide whether Mark Twain would be amused by or disgusted with the metaphorical use to which Tom Sawyer’s whitewashing is being put in the digital age.
I can’t decide whether Mark Twain would be amused by or disgusted with the metaphorical use to which Tom Sawyer’s whitewashing is being put in the digital age.
Sales of English-language usage guides and dictionaries have plummeted by 40% in the past four years. (But see.)
Reading Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s “Letter from a Japanese Crematorium,” written after a visit to Japan for her grandmother’s funeral, feels like eavesdropping on the deepest and most spellbinding of secrets. My cousin Takahagi, a Buddhist priest, does not want me to go to the crematorium. It is not a place for visitors. When I press him, he explains: the crematorium . . .
Proof that Amanda Stern’s Happy Ending is truth in advertising: Laurie Anderson, reading.
Cormac McCarthy links: Will Ridley Scott really direct Blood Meridian? The Road moves Whitehead to tears cry a single tear at Dallas BBQ, and inspires 20 readings, and a scholar’s (casual) speculations.