It’s hard to find powerful figurative language. A good metaphor or simile needs to surprise you, either by describing the same old thing in a brand new way, or else striking a chord of recognition, putting it in some way that you immediately know is just what you meant but you never knew exactly [...]
As I was re-reading David Foster Wallace online, I received a forwarded email. It was from an aunt whose emails usually contain blinking/singing American flags and/or truisms that would have been cross-stitched on a pillow a generation ago. DFW would have loved her. The emails implicitly assume that I voted for Bush in both cycles [...]
Dear Ethicist:
I have this friend who’s a ghostwriter. She’s been asked to do a book for a potential client, and is feeling really torn. The job would pay a lot, and it would take only a short time — just three months or so. The potential client has done a few books in the past, [...]
Good people, I’ve been asked to say something at a wedding. The wedding of two people I introduced. One person was the good friend of my former upstairs neighbor in my apartment; the other person was the ex-girlfriend of a friend who has since fallen off the radar. She moved in with me after they [...]
I grew up in a family that swears. When I was four years old, my grandmother (not much of a swearer, herself) asked me not to say “fuck” around my 18-year-old cousin, because he might be offended by it. I suspect that she would likely have been more embarrassed than he would have [...]