Notes:

Latest blog posts from Hopscotch/Rayuela

I have not written anything on this blog in several weeks. This has been due to the fact that over that period my marriage has been disintegrating. Over the past two years I have now experienced the following:br /ulbr /lian automobile accident that nearly crippled mebr /lifour subsequent months... Read more...
Published 3 months ago


bOn Nicholson Baker's iHuman Smoke/i/bbr /br /iHuman Smoke/i... is not a conscientious pacifist tract. It is not a clever contribution to today's debate on warfare, and it does not add anything to what we know about World War II. It is a cheerful contribution to the movement against scholarship... Read more...
Published 4 months ago


bLand of the free/bbr /br /When I visited Bruges a few years ago, I toured a brewery (it was Belgium, after all). One part of the tour included a few rooms of inactive fermentation tanks. Back in the day, according to the tour guide, children were employed to climb inside the fermentation tanks... Read more...
Published 4 months ago


bIs this a sign of the early onset of senility?/bbr /br /I have been following the election campaign for mayor of London, and as a part of this effort I was reading the official a href="http://www.backboris.com/" target="new"website/a for Tory candidate Boris Johnson. Although I knew Johnson was... Read more...
Published 5 months ago


bCelebrity sightings/bbr /br /Yesterday: Actor a href="http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0001173/" target="IMDb"Aaron Eckhart/a in a href="http://thecitybakery.com/index2.htm" target="new"City Bakery/a.br /br /Today: Playwright and actor a href="http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0001731/" target="IMDb"Sam... Read more...
Published 5 months ago


bOn last night's riots in Montreacute;al/bbr /br /blockquoteiListen up, sports fans. Let's try to have a little decorum, shall we? No torching police cars until your team has won the championship./i/blockquotebr /br /div align="right"#151;King Kaufman, in ia... Read more...
Published 6 months ago


bBill Kristol, Chicken-hawk child of privilege/bbr /br /blockquoteThere are few more reprehensible traits in American political culture than the constant exploitation of the glories of "sacrifice for freedom" by war cheerleaders like Kristol who ensure that only others sacrifice and neither they... Read more...
Published 6 months ago


bSo Many Books/bbr /br /Gabriel Zaid, a Mexican poet and essayist, wrote a wonderful book a few years ago entitled ia href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?ISBN=9781589880030" target="bn"So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance/a/i. There are a... Read more...
Published 6 months ago


span style="font-weight:bold;"And Toto too?/spanbr /br /From the schedule of the Pope's upcoming visit to the U.S., as found on a a href="http://www.uspapalvisit.org/itinerary_en.htm" target="Pontifex"site/a hosted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:br /br /blockquoteiSunday, April 20, 8... Read more...
Published 6 months ago


bIs the U.S. Constitution going to be good for more than wallpaper?/bbr /br /Stories such as this a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/us/08bar.html" target="NYT"one/a, wherein Congress tries to give away power to the rampant executive branch, make we wonder how much longer our Constitution... Read more...
Published 6 months ago


span style="font-weight:bold;"Paul Scofield, R.I.P./spanbr /br /I never got to see Paul Scofield perform on the stage, so all I know of his work is from the films he made. He was an actor of unusual presence and grace. He gave an excellent performance as Mark Van Doren in ia... Read more...
Published 7 months ago


span style="font-weight:bold;"I am impressed by Obama's speech on race/spanbr /br /This was an excellent speech. Read it a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html" target="Obama"here/a. He makes a good point about not disowning a friend or family member because of... Read more...
Published 7 months ago