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Fathers

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.

December 1978

Thanksgiving

Anchors raised, we were a free people journeying into our own living flesh, and consciousness striving to know itself: political freedom; economic freedom; sexual freedom; artistic freedom. The freedom to abuse freedom. To enslave, and to set free. To become President, and to bear arms: to lean a rifle on a window sill, take aim, squeeze the trigger, and hurl a tiny speck of our own dark heart into the tissue of another. All for the sake of freedom — the greatest burden, the greatest joy.

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.

Five Poems

I want to love loneliness / the way I love you. I want / to enter it and twist up its / hair in my fist.

Selected Poems

Sunbeams

The political campaign won’t tire me, for I have an advantage. I can be myself.

John F. Kennedy

Nestles Vs. The Newborn

Death, Malnutrition, And The Infant Formula Boom

To the poor, uneducated mother, an obvious solution is stretching the formula by diluting it with more water than is specified on the package, the label of which she probably cannot read. A study conducted in Barbados in 1969 showed that 82% of the mothers were “stretching” the formula. They were making a 4-day can last between 5 days and 3 weeks.

Sara Elizabeth Safransky

Born Nov. 3, 1977, 1:45 A.M.

In the depth of my own understanding, I meet you in timeless wonder. I have no conscious memories of our “other lifetimes” together. It doesn’t matter. Your mother, reaching for you, drawing you back to her, reaches across the aeons.

Monstrosity And Beauty

Book Review

The October light in Vermont that gives the novel its title is variously seen. Lewis Hicks at one point sees it casting beauty over the landscape; James Page, in a moment of despair, believes it exposes all the world’s rottenness.