Charlie Pierce is a longtime sportswriter and author who has, among other things, reported for
Grantland,
Slate, and the
Boston Globe, paneled on
more than a few games of
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, and
fished diapers out of trees as a state forest ranger. He's also made a name for himself as one of the sharpest and most incisive political columnists since Molly Ivins. The lead writer for
Esquire's Politics Blog ever since a
caustic article on former Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell
cost him his Globe job, Pierce has churned out
an uninterrupted stream of clever, colorful, and challenging commentary on the 2012 election season and its implications for the nation's future, dispatches often seething with eviscerative anger but shot through with deep love of (or perhaps grief for) country. Look inside for a selection of Pierce's most vital works for some edifying Election Eve reading.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 5, 2012 -
73 comments
Just wait till we're alone together. Then I will tell you something new, something cold, something sleepy, something of cease and peace and the long bright curve of space. Go upstairs to your room. I will be waiting for you... As a rare October blizzard drifts a blanket of white across the Northeast just before Halloween, what better time to settle in and read (or watch)
Conrad Aiken's most famous short story,
"Silent Snow, Secret Snow." About a small boy who increasingly slips into an ominous fantasy of isolation and endless snow, it could be viewed as a metaphor about autism, Asperger's syndrome, and even schizophrenia before such conditions even had names. In addition to the 1934 short story, the tale has also been adapted as a
creepy 1966 black-and-white
short film (also at
the Internet Archive) and as a
Night Gallery episode (
1,
2) narrated by Orson Welles. Or for a more academic take, see the essay
"The Delicious Progress" examining Aiken's use of white as a symbol of psychological regression.
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 29, 2011 -
9 comments
