All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.
At what point do we admit that the NFL’s true economic function is to channel our desire for athletic heroism into an engine of nihilistic greed?
The reason Americans favor milk chocolate over dark is because Milton Hershey got his bars into enough American mouths to establish our collective taste.
This, it would turn out, is the main thing we had in common: a susceptibility to the brassy escapism of myth.
The body releases its electricity, merges with another, and together there is something like God in this pleasure. But afterward, in the quiet redolent air, there must also be offerings of truth. And so the mystery of love deepens.
What would happen if some invisible gas leak in the school cafeteria caused diminished brain activity in students? Can we safely assume district officials would evacuate the school until further notice? That parents would be up in arms? That media and lawyers would descend in droves to collect statements from the innocent victims? Can we assume that the community would not gather together en masse on Friday nights to eat hot dogs and watch the gas leak?
We live in a society that puts a high premium on success and I learned, mainly through my dad, that salvation would come through success, and I carried that into my adult life and it’s a total lie.
Isn’t there something you want to tell me, something filthy and lovely and true.
I myself despise “Macarena,” and yet I have been humming it for the past three days and my two-year-old daughter is now humming it and I’m pretty sure she will never stop.
If you’re wondering if you’re a collector, ask yourself two questions. Do I own too many records? Do my friends and family feel I own too many records? If your respective answers are No and Yes, you’re a Collector.
The record is not simply a storage device. Its value resides in the particular set of memories and emotional associations held by its owner. These are inseparable from the physical object, which is no longer a physical object but an article of faith.
Boyle looked like a Monty Python in drag. Then she opened her mouth and this epic noise came ripping out of her. Within a week, she was the most celebrated person on earth, an.
Styx has become the mullet of bands.
Hey, Dad, check this out!” Ike stared at the boy. He clearly wanted to be down there watching his kid possibly crack his skull open, rather than recording a song about how frightened he was that his kids might crack their skulls open.
Music has become more pervasive and portable than ever. But it feels less precious in the bargain. I.
Rock and roll allowed people to lie about themselves, and to be sanctified for the extravagance of their fictions. This.
It’s the reason we become enamored of certain singers, I think, because they project the voice we wish to summon within ourselves. His.
More than any single issue, Gil’s essential topic was America, how the nation had fallen away from its moral precepts and into ruin, a condition of spiritual malaise that would eventually deliver us the bigotry and psychotic greed of the Bush Era.
The true work of love resides in sticking with the process, especially in those moments, and eras, when desire is forced to coexist with doubt.
First, that troubled people tend to be the most powerful figures in a family, the most effective at exporting their internal discord into the world around them.
Convenience is the gateway drug to entitlement. It drains people of their empathy, because it fosters the illusion that they can proceed through life without hardship. This makes it harder for them to imagine others who are facing hardship.