Posts by David Benjamin
“Professional”
by David Benjamin “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” —Richard Bach PARIS—When I was in high school, it was my devoutest wish to call myself a writer. Lately, in book talks and public presentations, I’ve amended my title to “professional writer.” The rub is, what have I done to merit this presumption?……
Read MoreThe silence of the regulars
by David Benjamin “The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.” ― Douglas Adams PARIS—The fat girl was asking after me. Hotlips…
Read More“What will we tell the children?”
by David Benjamin “The objects of which Paris folks are fond– literature, art, medicine, and adultery.” — Mark Twain MADISON, Wis.—During one of my Paris sojourns a few years ago, I was visibly perplexed (Hotlips said to me, “You look perplexed. What’s gong on?”) by a big demonstration in Paris over a proposed French law…
Read MoreJim Otis’ gun
by David Benjamin “He opened the passenger side. He flipped open the glovebox and gently withdrew his Colt .44, a gun he rarely heeled and never fired. Once in a while, he displayed it for effect. It looked pretty much like the gun that John Wayne and Clint Eastwood had used to blow the brains……
Read MoreThe man on Undecided Street
by David Benjamin “The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, ‘Where is the best place to go to?’ He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had…
Read MoreFact Check: Kamala Harris is alive. Honest!
by David Benjamin “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible.” — Donald Trump, 23 Jan. ‘16 It all started with a question from ABC News’ David Muir during the September 10 presidential debate. Muir asked ex-president Donald Trump his position…
Read MoreThe seven species of memory
by David Benjamin “Memory is, among the faculties of the human mind, that of which we make the most frequent use … Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.” ―Samuel Johnson MADISON, Wis.—“There’s a holdup in the Bronx,/ Brooklyn’s broken out in fights … ” Ask……
Read MoreThe invasion of the budding intellectuals
by David Benjamin “Wait a minute, Mrs. Twombly! Now that we’ve graduated, you want us to call you ‘ALICE’? That’s like having a friend named Alice and suddenly she asks you to call her ‘Spot’!” MADISON, Wis.—One Friday night in my seventeenth year, probably after a football or basketball game … Wait a minute, how…
Read MoreThe Oracle of Madison Avenue
by David Benjamin “I’m from Milwaukee and I oughta know/ It’s draft-brewed Blatz beer wherever you go!/ Smoother, fresher, less filling, that’s clear!/ Blatz is Milwaukee’s finest beer.” MADISON, Wis.—During my strange career interlude as a public relations flack in Boston, I became an avid reader of Advertising Age, the bulging weekly chronicle of the…
Read MoreThe paradox of smalltown crime
by David Benjamin “It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which……
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