"A fast-paced, suspenseful dystopian picaresque, part Huck Finn and part bizarro-world Swiss Family Robinson..."
---Kirkus
Long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and finalist for the Crawford Award. Title short story listed for the 2000 O. Henry award.
“I say I’m a pacifist because I’m a violent son of a bitch. I’m a Texan. I can feel it in every bone I’ve got. And I hate the language of pacifism because it’s too passive. But by avowing it, I create expectations in others that hopefully will help me live faithfully to what I […]
Sat, July 28 2012 » Religion/Logos » No Comments
“Attending to the language of my fellow human beings, I believe that many of them would never use the word “creator” but feel themselves very much included in the word “creation.” That something lies before us, a cosmos outside ourselves, makes us strangers to the world that is produced and administered and at home in […]
Sun, October 9 2011 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
For a long time I had willingly confused the two. It was a defense mechanism to confuse the two. I had considered in much of my childhood the biblical necessity of humility, meekness and poverty of spirit to be other phrases to describe shyness! I’ve often wondered where the shyness has come to begin with. […]
Sun, August 28 2011 » Life Studies, Religion/Logos » No Comments
My computer has been in the shop for, like, about a month because of a virus. I haven’t really had a backup computer suitable for blogging. UNTIL NOW. OK, so it’s time to blog about the sorcery of social media. This essay by Jim Grote adroitly puts together a case for Simone Weil‘s theory of […]
Mon, June 21 2010 » Fiction, Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
From the Economist’s obituary of Alice Lakwena: “But it was not Alice Auma who was sitting by the Nile. She was possessed by a spirit called Lakwena…Lakwena also offered, in August 1986, to conduct the war for them. And when the rebel commanders ignored him, he and Alice formed their own army. The Holy Spirit […]
Mon, January 29 2007 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
This is not a joke. This is not fiction. This is from “Waves of Glory! A Report and Photos on the Kids on Fire Summer School of Ministry“: Our anticipation level of what would happen that night on a scale of one to ten was about a fifteen! We were not disappointed as the moving […]
Tue, September 19 2006 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
I have really mixed feelings about what this article about membership libraries implies. As usual, the New York Times skates over the larger implications, and has its usual class-based steganography: Manhattan has three membership libraries: the Mercantile, the New York Society Library and the Library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen. All of […]
Mon, June 12 2006 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
Don’t yet have a con report in me-worked 11.5 hours last night with pretty much nothing in the tank. But this is a quick link-up in the “creeping/creepy Christianism” department-the Colorado Rockies baseball organization attributing their recent semi-success to Jesus Jesus Jesus (and having an all-Christian clubhouse): While praising their players, Rockies executives make clear […]
Wed, May 31 2006 » Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
I had to take After Writing back to the library, so these are transcriptions I hurriedly jotted in my notebook. With my crappy handwriting. This, here, is the epigraph for the book, which I love: “In the struggle for time, state and art must destroy each other since the state wishes to stop the flow […]
Sun, December 11 2005 » Fiction, Poetry, Religion/Logos » No Comments
I’ve been reading Alain Badiou’s Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil over the weekend. If you have even the slightest tolerance for philosophical wonkiness, I highly recommend it. The book throughout creates touchpoints with questions of what art can mean-or does it mean?-in contemporary society. Badiou is not a postmodernist; in fact he […]
Mon, August 29 2005 » Religion/Logos » 2 Comments
“She sees a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven…she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burnt away.” -Flannery O’ Connor, “Revelation”
Thu, July 28 2005 » Religion/Logos » 1 Comment
More hypothetizing is stranger than science fiction. What if the speed of light is slowing down? It surely then would suggest “that scientific validation exists for a (gasp) literal interpretation of the seminal passages of Genesis.”
Mon, July 11 2005 » Religion/Logos » 5 Comments
I usually don’t blog on weekends, and I had a nice, long weekend. Just some random notes to get things started… +Rabid Transit #3 and #4 are now up on Project Pulp. Check out their other sundry wares; it has one of the most interesting arrays of small press magazines and books available anywhere. +I […]
Wed, July 6 2005 » Fiction, Religion/Logos » 3 Comments
Chris (and pretty much any friend I have), I know you’re not going to be too psyched about The Ohio Restoration Project, involving the training of “Pastor Patriots.”
Wed, June 1 2005 » Polis, Religion/Logos » 2 Comments
