Tom DeMott died suddenly from a heart attack in his New York City apartment on October 23rd.
Mondays in the Sun: Tom DeMott and the Promise of Happiness
The author first met Tom on Anna Maria Island in Florida. He wrote these reflections about his then new–but now late–friend a year or so ago…
Port of Shadows (Excerpt from Library of Congress’s “The Unknown Kerouac”)
What follows is the conclusion of “I Wish I Were You”–the concluding story in the new Library of Congress volume:The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished and Newly Translated Writings. “I Wish I Were You” is a dark story, but I believe my Beat brother Tom DeMott would’ve found the light in it. B.D.
The Bitch Whistle
The appointment of Brett Kavanaugh is a stark reminder of patriarchal power, but also a catalyst of militance and mobilization. Suburban women—the so-called soccer moms—are a major swing vote, and in the midterms their feelings about sexual harassment could be a decisive factor, at least when it comes to the House. But beneath the outrage and determination is a more complicated picture. To ignore it is to suffer the results.
Judge Kavanaugh and Adventures of the Dialectic
“Oh Fuck!” Senator Coons reportedly said when he learned last Friday morning his friend Jeff Flake would vote to send Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Senate for a final confirmation vote.
Face Time
For me a big part of rapey culture are those faces, those tight, thin-lipped, angry, grizzled, wrinkled faces that are ugly from self-loathing and alcohol and a sense entitlement that is crumbling, those faces belonging to male humans with the power to govern every part of my life and the lives of other women and men, those faces looking down, the spittle and pointed fingers, the screwed up features or the features flat with inobservance and power fatigue, those faces that are so much stupider than you, have always been more ignorant, cloudy in their thinking, poorly read if read at all, fucking stupid and dumb but with power.
Wilde Week
The Kavanaugh Affair may have a socially chilling effect, leading drunken, sexually abusive Catholic young men to eschew public service and go into the priesthood instead.
Ventilator Blues
From sea to shining sea aging white males gather on playgrounds confused about who they are and certain that someone has it in for them. They may be playing golf or pickle ball rather than putting on the pads for football, but many still worry about how to gain and keep power and how to affirm their sexual identities. For many, women are trophies.
Keil’s Tree of Life
Charlie Keil caught up with Aretha Franklin’s “Tree of Life” last week. When your editor mentioned there were other wonders on Franklin’s Rare and Unreleased CDs, Keil mused about another rare Ree: “I think I still have somewhere a 45 rpm single of Aretha’s ‘Precious Lord’ that I picked up at Chess Records office.” Keil responded to Aretha’s call with this shapely poem …
Public Events & Private Truths: Two Poems from “A Dog’s Life”
If we’re lucky, Adam Scheffler’s poetry–lucid, demotic, right-valued–is on the verge of becoming a national resource.
Robert Lowell x 3
1. I was crossing Harvard Square, coming from the Coop, on my way to Adams House, where my study was. I saw Lowell near the kiosk and he saw me about the same time. He waved me over. “The most extraordinary thing has happened,” he said. “Can you come with me?”
Dreams Fade Into the Everblue: Lori McKenna’s Bygone Humanism
“Here is what I know” is the first line of “A Mother Never Rests,” the opening track off country singer Lori McKenna’s latest LP. “Even when she’s sleeping she’s still dreaming about you”–her voice is weary yet sure of wisdoms both received and earned. McKenna dives into the laundry-list of domestic chores and anxieties expected of a mother in red-state America.
Patriotism and the Christian Spirit
Proust rejected (respectfully) Tolstoi’s polemic against patriotism in the following short review, which was translated by Sylvia Townsend Warner and included in Marcel Proust on Art and Literature (1957).
An Untired Peacemaker’s Last Stretch (Uri Avnery R.I.P.)
Uri Avnery, “grandfather” of Israel’s peace movement (who once fought for the Irgun) died on August 20th. Avnery’s angle on Middle East conflicts began to change after he served valiantly (and sustained a serious wound) in the 1948 war. Back in that day, “I and my friends raised for the first time the principle that there is a Palestinian people with whom we have to make peace,” as he told an Israeli interviewer a few years ago, adding: “I don’t think there were 10 people in the world that believed in this. Today it is a world consensus.”
Our Lady, Undoer of Knots (Or, “Hell is full of small talk.”)
Fr. Rick Frechette is a medical doctor and Catholic priest who has been working in Haiti for a more than a generation, running hospitals and social programs in Port-au-Prince as well as a Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos orphanage on the outskirts of the capital. He wrote the following epistle to his family and supporters last week.