Posts by David Benjamin
You want to be free? How much you got?
by David Benjamin “… The president-elect has 96.2 million followers on X, while Mr. Musk has 207.9 million. (Mr. Musk is also far richer than Mr. Trump. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is worth $458 billion, while the president-elect is worth a mere $6.61 billion.)…” — NY Times, 19 Dec. MADISON, Wis.—Once, one…
Read MoreThe editorial hole
by David Benjamin “How to write: butt in chair. Start each day anywhere. Let yourself do it badly. Just take one passage at a time. Get butt back in chair.” Anne Lamott MADISON, Wis.—Since the mid-1970s, I’ve spent my life deep in the editorial hole with no way out and no serious effort to escape.……
Read MoreWhere’s Santa?
by David Benjamin We gotta send Santa Claus back to the Rescue Mission. Christmas don’t make it no more. Don’t you know that murder and destruction Scream the toys in every store… — Frank Zappa Ralphie was too old to believe in Santa Claus but zero hour was approaching and he couldn’t afford to risk…
Read MoreThe residue of journalism
by David Benjamin “From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.” ― Isabel Allende MADISON,……
Read MoreInvasion of the Hermaphrodites!
by David Benjamin “It was difficult for me to see the relationship between public morals and public toilets, as to me those facilities had been more a matter of convenience than of sex.” —Christine Jorgensen MADISON, Wis.—Come here once. Follow me into the boys’ room. I know, it’s a scary place—where dead-end kids go to…
Read MoreHoning in on the haphazard homonym
by David Benjamin “When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending…
Read MoreThe magic of “narrative transportation”
by David Benjamin “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly……
Read MoreOur so-what majority
by David Benjamin “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” —Pogo MADISON, Wis.—It might not seem evident to the naked psyche, but the MAGA army is in retreat. Its soldiers are, after all, a cult whose god is now a lame duck. The Capitol Hill vandals have one last tantrum to throw—call it…
Read MoreMovies to warm your cockles by
by David Benjamin “Sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass everyday, but, mister, you ain’t seen a ray of light since you got here.” — Opal Fleener MADISON, Wis.— America is a nation of front-runners. There’s ample evidence of this in the fact that, for example, the most-bought baseball cap every year since before…
Read More“Style” is not fashion
You can call it copy editing or nitpicking. But the exhaustive application of “style” rules, in grammar and punctuation are a basic necessity to the discipline and reputation of a serious writer. by David Benjamin “The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing……
Read More