I went scouring for reviews of David Mamet’s new novel “Chicago” immediately after turning its last page, mainly because, 1) I’m not a critic, and I wanted to see what others had to say about this strangely literary yet gritty crime story set in 1920s gangland Chicago, 2) I desperately feared I missed something; a… Read More Speak to me
When I was in college, one of the many jobs I cycled through (including busboy, dishwasher, flapjack turner and hash browns slinger, assembly line hack at a plant that built transistors, stone shoveler, bathroom scrubber, copy boy, high school sports stringer, telemarketer, and ticket-taker at a movie theater) was working the counter at the just-off-campus… Read More The outlaw life
I’m not a literary critic, although the protagonist’s father in Richard Russo’s 1997 novel “Straight Man” is. To be honest, it’s hard to be a critic when I barely know what the word protagonist means. But the Dad in “Straight Man” — who doesn’t make his first appearance until page 343 of my paperback edition… Read More To read on or not
Every new year, our very Southern neighbors prepare me a dinner plate. They’ve been doing it for years — they’re great next-door neighbors — because, in the South, that’s what neighbors do. And they do it because they know that I love it. They come to their back gate, which opens up on our cul… Read More Black-eyed peas and collard greens
Several years ago, journalists at The Washington Post loosed their considerable investigative resources onto the world of pro football. The dogged scribes there weren’t digging into Deflategate or drug problems or skinflinty millionaire owners or brain injuries or men in too-tight pants who like to punch women in their off-hours. They were instead breaking down… Read More The problem with football
We try again. The last page flips, we all take a breath (or go on a societally approved bender), the new year arrives and we try again. We take a minute to look back on the year that has passed, go all Auld Lang Syne on it (or, in the case of 2018, bury it… Read More An old story, a new start
JD Blogs 