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Man, Videtan Flora, And The Berendora Of Equatorial Videt

“Dangling in his face was a single stem of the graceful foliage of the Eighteenth Species. He saw then that he could not hold back, and yet must risk doing terrible damage to the crowning floral creation of the Universe. He crept forward in an agony of joy and terror.”

Sports

(Part Two)

A curve ball, Panic Alley, the Birch Tree

The World According To Irving, Garp, Bensenhaver

Book Review

John Irving has laid his cards on the table. From what seemed to be the beginning of a long realistic chronicle, he has moved into a world of fantasy, symbol, and wild humor, and for the rest of the novel he settles into neither world, but shuttles back and forth between the two.

Angel At The Gate

In the year I was sixteen, on the first day of that new year, my father died, and since that time I have longed hopelessly for a paradise that will never return.

The Horseman Of Marrakech

I rubbed my eyes to clear my vision. I looked closely once again to make sure. I could barely see the tall shape prancing in and out of the traffic. I squinted through the haze and then knew I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. “Yes,” I said to myself, “he thinks he’s a horse.”

Sunbeams

And where to all these highways go
Now that we are free?
Why are the armies marching still
That were coming home to me?
O lady with your legs so fine
O stranger at your wheel
You are locked into your suffering
And your pleasures are the seal

Leonard Cohen

Old Master

Book Review

What most impresses me about the work of V.S. Pritchett is its stunning variety. I am faced with the question that often arises in confronting a substantial artist: how can he know all that he does? Each story is unique in its characters, techniques, its tone: each creates its own small peculiar world. “Blind Love,” the title story of an earlier volume, and the third story in this one, deserves special mention.

Memoirs Of A Professional Killer

Some Sea Stories From The Big Deuce

Once they gave a war, and everybody came. They called it World War II, and the entire basis of this essay is that one man’s recollections of it — necessarily different from every other man’s — are worth preserving.

Lot’s Daughter

Tobacco Town: Durham’s Beginnings

The rising lust for smoking tobacco made Durham and Duke. In 1870, a year after it was incorporated, the one-square mile village had a population of 256. There were 3,000 residents by 1884, 6,679 by 1900, and an estimated 18,000 by 1907.