"A fast-paced, suspenseful dystopian picaresque, part Huck Finn and part bizarro-world Swiss Family Robinson..."
---Kirkus
Long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and finalist for the Crawford Award. Title short story listed for the 2000 O. Henry award.
“Attending to the language of my fellow human beings, I believe that many of them would never use the word “creator” but feel themselves very much included in the word “creation.” That something lies before us, a cosmos outside ourselves, makes us strangers to the world that is produced and administered and at home in [...]
Sun, October 9 2011 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
For a long time I had willingly confused the two. It was a defense mechanism to confuse the two. I had considered in much of my childhood the biblical necessity of humility, meekness and poverty of spirit to be other phrases to describe shyness! I’ve often wondered where the shyness has come to begin with. [...]
Sun, August 28 2011 » Life Studies, Religion/Logos » No Comments
My computer has been in the shop for, like, about a month because of a virus. I haven’t really had a backup computer suitable for blogging. UNTIL NOW. OK, so it’s time to blog about the sorcery of social media. This essay by Jim Grote adroitly puts together a case for Simone Weil‘s theory of [...]
Mon, June 21 2010 » Fiction, Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
From the Economist’s obituary of Alice Lakwena: “But it was not Alice Auma who was sitting by the Nile. She was possessed by a spirit called Lakwena…Lakwena also offered, in August 1986, to conduct the war for them. And when the rebel commanders ignored him, he and Alice formed their own army. The Holy Spirit [...]
Mon, January 29 2007 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
This is not a joke. This is not fiction. This is from “Waves of Glory! A Report and Photos on the Kids on Fire Summer School of Ministry“: Our anticipation level of what would happen that night on a scale of one to ten was about a fifteen! We were not disappointed as the moving [...]
Tue, September 19 2006 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
I have really mixed feelings about what this article about membership libraries implies. As usual, the New York Times skates over the larger implications, and has its usual class-based steganography: Manhattan has three membership libraries: the Mercantile, the New York Society Library and the Library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen. All of [...]
Mon, June 12 2006 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
Don’t yet have a con report in me–worked 11.5 hours last night with pretty much nothing in the tank. But this is a quick link-up in the “creeping/creepy Christianism” department–the Colorado Rockies baseball organization attributing their recent semi-success to Jesus Jesus Jesus (and having an all-Christian clubhouse): While praising their players, Rockies executives make clear [...]
Wed, May 31 2006 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
I had to take After Writing back to the library, so these are transcriptions I hurriedly jotted in my notebook. With my crappy handwriting. This, here, is the epigraph for the book, which I love: “In the struggle for time, state and art must destroy each other since the state wishes to stop the flow [...]
Sun, December 11 2005 » Fiction, Poetry, Religion/Logos » No Comments
I’ve been reading Alain Badiou’s Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil over the weekend. If you have even the slightest tolerance for philosophical wonkiness, I highly recommend it. The book throughout creates touchpoints with questions of what art can mean–or does it mean?–in contemporary society. Badiou is not a postmodernist; in fact he [...]
Mon, August 29 2005 » Religion/Logos » 2 Comments
“She sees a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven…she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burnt away.” –Flannery O’ Connor, “Revelation”
Thu, July 28 2005 » Religion/Logos » 1 Comment
More hypothetizing is stranger than science fiction. What if the speed of light is slowing down? It surely then would suggest “that scientific validation exists for a (gasp) literal interpretation of the seminal passages of Genesis.”
Mon, July 11 2005 » Religion/Logos » 5 Comments
I usually don’t blog on weekends, and I had a nice, long weekend. Just some random notes to get things started… +Rabid Transit #3 and #4 are now up on Project Pulp. Check out their other sundry wares; it has one of the most interesting arrays of small press magazines and books available anywhere. +I [...]
Wed, July 6 2005 » Fiction, Religion/Logos » 3 Comments
Chris (and pretty much any friend I have), I know you’re not going to be too psyched about The Ohio Restoration Project, involving the training of “Pastor Patriots.”
Wed, June 1 2005 » Polis, Religion/Logos » 2 Comments
Growing up Catholic, devoutly, going to 12 years of Catholic school and still remaining semi-devout for 4 years after that, all I have to say about the selection of this new pope is that–I’m glad I got out while I did.
Tue, April 19 2005 » Religion/Logos » 1 Comment
The numinous is a temporary tattoo. On the morning when you’re to wash it off, there’s a blast from three blocks away, flash and heat, and the tattoo is suddenly permanent (this is not the same as a scar. I think). The questions then become: (1) what is it a tattoo of? (2) where is [...]
Tue, December 21 2004 » Religion/Logos » No Comments
Thinking a lot about how Dobson,one of the architects of the current American fundamentalism, writes self-help books–his brand of fundamentalism has a lot in common with the worst New Ageisms, the primacy of individual entitlement cloaked in righteousness. The thunderous apathy of American society in many quarters has as much to do with Madonna’s kaballah [...]
Mon, November 15 2004 » Religion/Logos » 2 Comments
From Minor American: If we restrict ourselves, despite all the caveats above, to the church-centered version of the moral values argument, what emerges as a particular strength of the right is the extent to which there are already-existing modes of social organization in the communities where they�re drawing votes. These organizations � churches and attendant [...]
Fri, November 12 2004 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
For these Solomonic times…I’d posted this about a year ago, but I thought I’d replay it. From Walter Bruggeman’s Prophetic Imagination: The possibility of an alternative consciousness…was quite removed from Israel in Solomon’s time. The king characteristically could find no such notion acceptable. It seems likely that criticism could no longer be practiced because the [...]
Fri, November 5 2004 » Polis, Religion/Logos » 1 Comment
“In being vertically lofty and horizontally broad, the vertical is the door to the source whereas the horizontal is the door to the manifestation. The spiritual roots are like those of grass and trees. The grass and trees are the idea of the door to the manifestation. The source itself is water. Pouring the water [...]
Thu, September 23 2004 » Religion/Logos » No Comments
It looks like it’s raining outside but it’s not. I’m not sure if it’s haze or minute insects. It’s supposed to rain tonight. I’m on pg. 71 of the poem. I’m exhausted by it. But I’m not stopping as of yet. I’m not entirely sure how the different sections are cobbled together coherently, as there’s [...]
Wed, September 22 2004 » Religion/Logos » 1 Comment
