Literary “Realism” Mistaken for an Argument

“Authors, restrained by our laws against obscenity—rather silly laws, it may be—from using half a dozen monosyllables, felt as if they were martyrs of science, like Galileo. To the objection ‘This is obscene’ or “This is depraved’, or even to the more critically relevant objection ‘This is uninteresting’, the reply ‘This occurs in real life’ …

Uptight Grammarians, Out With Whom We Do Not Wish to Hang

“I am thinking of what I call Style-mongers. On taking up a book, these people concentrate on what they call its ‘style’ or its ‘English’. They judge this neither by its sound nor by its power to communicate but by its conformity to certain arbitrary rules. Their reading is a perpetual witch hunt for Americanisms, …

Round, Round, Get Around, I Get Around

Those who know me know that I do enjoy following politics, speaking and writing on the virtues that made America great. Between 2 am and 5 am, it appears that I am the Chairman of Townhall.com. And of course, there is the warm, approachable designer side of things as well. When it comes to interiors, …

The Casual Imperative

“Casualness is proper at times, but the trouble is we have made it a fetish. Whether shopping or going to school or even to church, we take too literally the invitation of the second-class hotel, ‘Come as you are.’ And the sloppier we come, the sloppier we tend to act. A slouch in the body …