THE NEXT THREE POSTS are more on vowed friendship. If you dun’ care, feel free to skip to here for Orson Welles’s adaptation of The Trial; Iron Man being the failbot we all know and/or love; a review of a fantasy magazine which had the poor judgment to publish one of my stories; and a few poems by Paul Celan. Read more

HOW NOW, SWORN VOW?: (sorry….) Round four of the grand discussion of reviving vowed friendship! For round one you can check out my Inside Catholic column, “Romoeroticism” (and my review of Alan Bray’s groundbreaking, beautiful book, The Friend); for round two, my comments here and here (the latter post is not specifically about friendship, but about other aspects of reactions to my IC piece); for round three, a series of posts and reader emails starting here; and now you get... Read more

reader #2: My initial response to the suggestion that we revive vowed friendship is, “Yes, obviously.” It’s madness that marriage is the only meaningful public mode of intimacy that our society allows. It just leaves so much of the psychological landscape… nameless. As the very last person to be actually interested in undertaking a vowed friendship (I’m a married white male who considers his wife his best friend and who has no significant male friendships to speak of), I nonetheless... Read more

reader #3: I’m one of those who has a problem with the formalized vow. I remember some time ago a discussion about this on the Courage email list, prompted by David Morrison. At that time and still today, I had no worries about the temptation and scandal issues. It was the idea of exclusivity that bothered me. For me, the Christian ideal is that one loves (agape) everyone equally. Not equally badly, of course, but perfectly, which would mean equally.... Read more

THE TRIAL: Orson Welles-directed Kafka adaptation. This is amazing. Wildly-angled noir atheology–one of the most consistent, and consistently persuasive, atheist movies I’ve ever seen. (In case you’re thinking of a film festival, off the top of my head I’d put Cube and maybe Nobody Knows on that list, for very different reasons.) Anthony Perkins is a shivery, wrong-jointed Joseph K, as uncomfortable as a snake trying to shed its skin. I honestly don’t know what to tell you except that... Read more

POWER CORRUPTS, AND AWESOME POWER CORRUPTS AWESOMELY. Read more

LADY CHURCHILL’S ROSEBUD WRISTLET #24 aka The One I’m In. Here’s a review of the whole zine, in case the fact that I’m In This One! isn’t enough for you. You can download each issue as an e-book for just $4 each. First of all, there is kind of a LCRW “house style,” ably demonstrated by this issue. It’s hard to describe fully, but some elements include lush prose, a mysterious and troubling atmosphere, and direct references to and subversions... Read more

You are throwing gold after meI am drowning:perhaps a fish can bebribed–Celan Read more

Evening after evening, embassiesdrift over, distilledfrom thoughts,hard as kings, hard as night,into the hands of the grief-constables:–Celan (excerpt) Read more

AGAINST SINCERITY. Jendi Reiter has my back! With bonus poetry, “How to Fail a Personality Test.” me vs. sincerity here (and sexily here) Read more