Columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
I wake up and bounce out of bed in a pleasant mood and then notice that I can see my breath. There is frost on the bathroom mirror and a thin sheet of ice in the toilet. So I trot downstairs and turn up the thermostat. I like the house to be cozy, as if […]
Read MoreIt’s good to know how to lie, and lie effectively, so you can go backstage after the high school production of “The Crucible” in which your friend’s daughter mumbled her lines and stood like a fencepost, trying to look horrified and looking drugged instead, and now here she is, fluttery, ashen-faced, perspiring, and you say, […]
Read MoreEverything was said that could be said about Ariel Sharon last week as he lay in a coma except the one thing that crossed the mind of every viewer watching newsreel footage of the prime minister, which was, “How much does that man weigh?” (Answer: 255 pounds. And he’s five-foot-seven.) He looked like a bull […]
Read MoreTROMSO, Norway – I began the new year as a sick man in a rather small space. It was a good solid cold, the sort of cold I usually catch just before a vacation – sore throat, stuffed head, racking cough – and the space was a middle seat, row 10, on a flight from […]
Read MoreA winter afternoon of soft gray light and then the snow comes, snowflakes descending through the cone of light from the streetlamp, a majestic stillness falling on the city, a lovely moment in life. Lighted windows of the big frame houses along the street and the shush of tires in the snow, and I put […]
Read MoreThe best part of Christmas is just before it starts, when all the preparations are done or it’s too late to worry about them, and after you run a vacuum around the living room you can sit down and close your eyes and let old Christmases come winging back from the Olden Days of Yore, […]
Read MoreOne more reason to believe in God is the hope for the ultimate judgment when someday Someone will pronounce the final truth and we’ll be done with all these small mean anecdotes that pass for history. Meanwhile, they constitute most of what we know about politics, stories told by men with a grudge. This is […]
Read MoreCall me Hrothgar the Savage, but when I look at men’s fashions in magazines, the models all sullen and sensitive and obviously spending much too much time on their hair, wearing sweaters made from Persian cat fur woven with feathers of snowy owls, yours for $1,495, I feel a strong urge to put on a […]
Read MoreI got to put on a tux and go to the National Book Awards in New York a couple weeks ago and eat lamb chops in a hotel ballroom and breathe air recently exhaled by Toni Morrison and Norman Mailer and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and other greats and near-greats of the trade. I was there as […]
Read MoreFamily, friends, good health (knock on wood), lots to be thankful for, including this $1.59 rollerball pen and its flowing cursive line that makes me feel as elegant as Michel de Montaigne. Gratitude makes sense for an American. We occupy a bountiful country of great civility (yes, really) and robustness and freedom, and if not […]
Read More