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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.

True Touch

In the Zen tradition, a line of succession of Zen Masters is supposed to be linked together by transmission of mind — pure thought transferred from mind to mind with no words. I think that with midwives there is a similar kind of transmission of touch.

Animals

Blaze’s five-gaited walk, Spot’s violent death, Tiger’s Mississippi River adventure

All In Common

What Gets Shared (And What Doesn’t) In Small Communities

Most communal groups in the United States today (of which by far the largest number are urban) are expense-sharing groups, at least as far as such things as groceries, mortgage or rent, taxes, utilities and vehicles used in common are concerned.

Pity: A Lesson In Self-Discovery

I have read that within the veneer of each heart a limp fist of pity is hanging. That is, in all the sadness and confusion of its tangle of veins the heart is the package in which pity is stored, the container in which it is marketed. One might say: I’d like two loaves of bread, a half-pound of bologna, a pint of macaroni salad, and a heart and a half of pity, please.

Selected Poems

Selected Poems

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.

Lot’s Daughter

Grandparents

A print that someone had jabbed holes where the eyes had been, The Secret Garden where the snow-drops bloomed, a pair of tweezers thrust into a hand