A Living in the Number One Country
Reflections from a Critic of American Empire
"Schiller has a problem getting his message across.
The reason: He's a dogmatist of the first water.
Reading this reminded me of that old wheeze,
When the only tool you own is a hammer,
every problem begins to resemble a nail."

Contempt
Alberto Moravia
"I was looking at her mouth
as one sometimes looks at a fruit
before putting one's teeth into it...
like a shellfish whose valves open
at the pulsating movement of some
living creature wet with cool sea-water."

Great Reviews of the Past
How Now Shall We Live?
"In none of his writings, for example,
will you find reference to the wonderfully earthy
back-and-forth between God and Moses that appears in
Exodus --- in which Moses ends up getting mooned."

BRIEF REVIEWS
Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail,
The Buddha Scroll, and
The Last Days of Napoleon

ARTICLES
Sex and Violence
"I suggested that the FCC create a fee schedule
which would be applied to each program
that involved mayhem or explicit sexual content.
I called it a Sex and Violence Fee."