Upcoming Events:
Wednesday, 6 May 9 am
Radio Interview with Phil Nee, on “Jim Otis and Smalltown Crime, WRCO Radio, Richland Center, Wis.
Friday, 29 May, 7 pm
Book Talk, Signing and Sale, on “Upstairs and the Jim Otis Series,” Belleville Books, 20 East Main St., Belleville, Ill.
Saturday, 30 May,1-3 pm
Meet & Greet, Signing & Sale of Last Kid Books, at Belleville Books, 20 East Main St., Belleville, Ill.
The Weekly Screed
by David Benjamin “Jack Kerouac the last time he visited my apartment 704 East 5th Street, N.Y.C., he looked by then like his late father, red-faced corpulent W. C. Fields shuddering with mortal horror, grimacing on D.M.T. I’d brought back from visiting Timothy Leary at Millbrook Psychedelic Community.” — Allen Ginsberg, 1964 MADISON, Wis.—I come…
by David Benjamin “O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain…” — from The…
by David Benjamin “A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.” — William James MADISON, Wis.—Recently, in a spasm of random woolgathering, I recalled my circle of high-school friends and their talent for writing. I had gravitated to kids for whom well-crafted prose was a common skill. My sidekick Dick, for example, wrote a…
by David Benjamin “Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk…
by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis.—The Achilles heel of the polling industry was exposed, once again, in a recent revelation that British young people are not, after all, flocking to the churches, chapels, synagogues and mosques of England. The kids are, in fact, just as agnostic, atheist and apostate as ever they’ve been. The press erroneously…
by David Benjamin “Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner PARIS—It’s a typical café restaurant in the Latin Quarter, whose breakfast fare largely consists—unless challenged—of coffee brewed in a magnificent,…
by David Benjamin “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.” —Trump PARIS—Luckily, I was on my way here when Donald Trump’s weekend excursion to Iran broke out. My good fortune amounted to the limited load of available news coverage, analysis and commentary through…
by David Benjamin “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” —Confucius PARIS—There has long existed a sort of nihilist cottage industry, lucrative for its philosophers and divines, that professes contempt for, well, professors. Every few years, someone writes a book claiming that he learned nothing in school…
by David Benjamin “In December, the conservative Manhattan Institute found that … a majority of Republican men under 50 think that the Holocaust either didn’t happen or was exaggerated.”—Michelle Goldberg, New York Times, 12 March PARIS—For a couple of hours in 1961, the Holocaust came to Tomah, Wisconsin. Until then, my entire knowledge of Jews…
by David Benjamin “Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.” —Proverbs 17:28 PARIS.—Lately in airport lounges, I’m feeling a little snakebit, or—more accurately—phone-battered. On my way here, in the “Admiral’s Club,” I found a comfortable chair, with a nearby table and only one neighbor. I had…