Perfume

Patrick Suskind

Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.

This was in the year 1799. Thank God Madame had suspected nothing of the fate awaiting her as she walked home that day in 1746, leaving Grenouille and our story behind. She might possibly have lost her faith in justice and with it the only meaning that she could make of life.

Grenouille sat at his ease on his bench in the cathedral of Saint-Pierre and smiled. His mood was not euphoric as he formed his plans to rule humankind. There were no mad flashing of the eye, no lunatic grimace passed over his face. He was not out of his mind, which was so clear and buoyant that he asked himself why he wanted to do it at all. And he said to himself that he wanted to do it because he was evil, thoroughly evil. And he smiled as he said it and was content. He looked quite innocent, like any happy person.

He did not yield, because that desire was an old one of his, to run away and hide in a cave. He knew about that already. What he did not yet know was what it was like to possess a human scent as splendid as the scent of the girl behind the wall. And even knowing that to possess that scent he must pay the terrible price of losing it again, the very possession and the loss seemed to him more desirable than a prosaic renunciation of both. For he had renounced things all his life. But never once had he possessed and lost.

Perfume brings an awareness of one's nose and sense of smell that you will no doubt have lost. An entire novel devoted to the sense of smell is worthy of note simply because it calls attention to a sense that often gets ignored. Perhaps because the sense of smell lacks a victim of particular visibility (sight has blind people, and hearing has deaf people--both of whom are very visible), but who has heard people who lack a sense of smell as being disadvantaged or even disabled? The very idea is ridiculous: you can't smell? So what? Probably works out for the best, after all there are lots of bad smells out there. I wish I didn't have a sense of smell. There is no pity for those who are disabled in their olfactory capabilities.
Suskind's novel is a delightful read, even if he loses control at the end. You'll never be so aware of the power of your nose as in the moments after you finish Perfume.

JB

Archibald MacLeish

I heard upon his dry dung heap
That man cry out who cannot sleep:
If God is God, He is not good,
If God is good, He is not God;
Take the even, take the odd,
I would not sleep here if I could
Except for the little green leaves in the wood
And the wind on the water.

Job presents a disturbing question: is God's answer to Job just? God acknowledges that Job is a good man, in fact God is even proud of him. God acquiesces to Satan's taunting and decides to test Job. God takes everything Job has been given. Job is angry, complains, but overall is still a good man. He doesn't call God a liar or an evil God. Job asks God for justice. Satan says try again. God allows Job to be hurt in his body. Job really complains this time. Finally God comes down and asks Job to justify himself (Job has been asking God to justify himself). God says, I am really really big and really really powerful. What are you? Job says, uh, oh nothing. Sorry to trouble. God blesses Job with new everything.

This story is not a pleasant story. It presents all manner of horrible questions. Does Job not deserve anything? You almost have to say that all the good things Job had were gifts and blessings and that his innocence afforded him nothing, because God gave all, even life. Yet if you take this approach, it does not make you feel to good. After all, what is all this love and justice business? Saying that Job deserves nothing and should just take it with equal happiness whether it's the death of his children or the prospering of his flocks is kind of ridiculous. Almost as bad as the things Job's comforters say to him: all these bad things happening to you prove that you are a bad man. Look in yourself for your sin. But of course, this whole thing started because Job wasn't that bad man. In fact he was so good, God was proud of him. This is just one of the many problems presented by Job.

JB doesn't really give you an answer to any of them, although it paints the story in a more terrible light. If you would like a sense of the truly awe-full nature of the story, JB is a good place to start.

Mercy Among the Children

David Adams Richards

Scone smiled, with a degree of naive self-infatuation seen only in those with an academic education, shook his head at the silliness of academia, while knowing that his tenure was secure and every thought he had ever had was manifested as safe by someone else before him. My father never had such a luxury. There was a time my father would have been beaten by his own father if it was known that he read. Knowing this, tell me the courage of Dr. David Scone.

What my father believed from the time his own father died was this: whatever pact you made with God, God will honour,. You may not think He does, but then do you really know the pact you have actually made? Understand the pact you have made, and you will understand how God honours it.

I will say this once, and not to demean all the good they have tried to do for you. But I have found out, even before the death of my father, that no one can do an injury to you without doing an injury to themselves. The wind and rain battered the eaves of the shoe-box shaped house, as if to mock him.

You see, she never in her life thought it necessary to laugh at me, Autumn said.

Because Sydney was trusted, some men asked him to arbitrate on their behalf. Devlin coming to him was not unusual. They relied on him, and they teased him. All mocking is a form of fear. Those who are most mocked are generally most feared. My father was mocked all his life.

Son, a priest is not the Church, and the Church is not the faith, Father answered.

Sydney, listen to me, my mother said that night. I want you to listen to me. You are allowed anything in this life--except the luxury of being different--this is why you are being tried. This is perhaps the only reason. Don't think professors get away with being different, because they do not---they conform--is that the word? Yes, conform. Not one has come out to defend you. They have all hidden. When Miss Young knew the book was to be used against you last week--and you said it was a great book--she went to the university and not one English professor came forward to claim its greatness . They didn't want to be associated with you even though she said she saw it on at least three professors' shelves. You are not human to them; they don't want you to read what they do or come to the same conclusions they come to. So I now know what their learning is worth.

I shrugged as if to say it made no difference. Then I went home. Once I was alone, my elation subsided, and I was left only with a picture of Hanny's kind dark face looking at me in confusion and in shame because I had hit him in front of his wife.

She is the best lawyer I know and the kindest person to ever deal with us--because that's all any of us want, Ms. Whyne--not revolution or doctrine but only kindness. I felt smug saying this, but I did not take it back.

All of a sudden falsehood just goes away.

What should I get from books? Alcide asked in French. That you are not alone--even along this broken tractor road. You need to know nothing else, my father answered in French.

Of course, Father's innocence afforded him nothing.

Nobody can do harm to you without doing more harm to themselves. Is this vile lie or shining truth? We are a world that claims to have values and ideals and simultaneously a world that looks askance at those ideals, noting with cold eye that they don't do much good for those who live them. As many words as we use and know, I still comes first, sometimes family, but mostly I. When it comes down it, we only believe sin is as bad as the suffering we see. When the sinners triumph, enjoy their riches, and walk with gleaming shoes, we condemn but also connive a way to follow in their shining footsteps.

Often in my calmness or naivete or simplicity, I feel that I am not as real as all the angry people bent on destroying themselves and others. In a way, I think that is what Mercy Among Children is about. That we the great mass of people are not real unless we somehow are evil. Our sin is what distinguishes us, our evil is uniquely are own, it's the darkness that gives our faces definition. Though knowledge may come with evil. This does not necessarily mean that knowledge is what provides reality. Indeed, the ignorant are often more sincere, more real, than those considered knowledgeable.

Some even arrive at the folly of feeling they need forgiveness for their peace, enjoyment, and joy. For those who do not suffer wonder what they've done wrong.

Is a man who believes that evil doers do more harm to themselves than to the people they harm a man I should take seriously? And if his reaction is one of abject and complete pacifism, should I take that as a potentially commendable path? On the one hadn he suffers many evils but embodies Saul Bellow's man who ends the pain chain of X hit Y hit Z. On the other hand, this man brings such pain on his family and wife that it is questionable whether or not he actually does them harm himself. In this fallen world, how are we to be Holy? For the system no longer supports that version, and the holy tend to find themselves dumped. Too often it seems innocence affords us nothing.

This book will make your muscles spasm in anger, but if you take the time to feel around your anger a little you'll quickly begin to wonder just what you're angry at...

The World Within the Word

William H Gass

Photographs represented occasions once upon a time. You dressed for them as you might for church; they cost money; they recorded important moments; you faced front' you seldom smiled, since levity was not the mark you wanted put across your face forever; yet the result of this resolute Egyptian solemnity was to separate people as they sat or stood together, man and wife or members of a band, to emphasize the withdrawn, inward look they all had, because there was nothing in front of them but a lens as cold and darkly caped as God's eye. Even the dogs were docile, cow-jawed, stiff as porcelain. There were, of course, no cats.

The lovely countryside was filled with suicides. They hung themselves from trees, of course, and exploded their brains from their heads with guns. They threw themselves in front of trains, cut their own throats, used morphine. They ate the heads off matches, swallowed cigar stubs, carbolic acid, arsenic. Paris green. They drowned themselves in rain barrels, rivers, ponds, wells (as, in pique, a child did). They hammered in their own heads, set fire to themselves as they had torched that dog, and with dynamite blew apart their painful being. Occasionally they murdered others first. Or ran away into the woods. They became hermits. They froze to death, rime on their limbs like blond hairs. But the plague of man was as relentless as that of nature.

Nothing was too mean for his imagination because he did not believe there was any insignificance on earth.

I can hold a stone to the light, set it in silver, let it decorate my finger, even permit it to reveal my marital intentions, but I"m not supposed to walk through Kant as through a cathedral, admiring the beauties of the nave, transept, and choir, curious about the catacombs, dubious about the dome, and positively frightened by the spire. What an affront to the serious purposes of the great man! Isn't that the conventional opinion? Only the writer who writes to provide such careless strolls is worse, they say. This villain, who puts words together with no intention of stating, hoping, praying or persuading...only imagining, only creating...is to many immoral, certainly frivolous, a trivial person in a time of trouble (and what time is not?), a parasite upon whatever scrofulous body the body politic possesses at that moment.

A word is a wanderer.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

As for the Russians, they'd forgotten which hand to cross themselves with.

How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's cold?

Oh, you musn't pray for that either, said Alyosha, horrified. Why do you want freedom? In freedom your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds. You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul. As the Apostle Paul wrote: 'Why all these tears? Why are you trying to weaken my resolution? For my part I am ready not merely to be bound but even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus."

Solzhenitsyn deserves credit for many things, not least among them is his ability to weave a compelling, easily-read story without a traditional storyline. In school they teach you Exposition, Rising Action, Turning Point, Climax, Denouement, but Solzhenitsyn manages to circumvent this infectious storyline with Ivan Denisovich. I always admire stories that manage not to rely on gripping climaxes, directed outcomes, and delicately balanced actions. Although all these things often occur in life, we rarely are gifted enough to glimpse how they attain their equilibrium; we rarely find as much meaning in life as we find in stories. Which might be the purpose of stories. But the best stories are those that have a few bits that are meaningful not because they further the plot, develop the character, foreshadow the end, or explicate the depth, but because they are real. Some very strange things really happen. So do many normal things. Two loons might even sit on a lake and call to one another. And a man might even witness that. So the trick is not to write a meaningful story with normal things; the trick is not to write a normal story with meaningful things; the trick is not to write a story so meaningful it ceases to be normal, nor so normal it ceases to be meaningful; the trick is not even to write a story that recognizes the meaning in normal things--no, the trick is to write a story that is content with the meaning of normal things.

Poor People

William T Vollmann

At any rate, here follows one more sad and probably useless categorization of the "dimensions of poverty."

The terminal cancer patient who believes in cures, isn't he better off? The "healthy" soul who looks forward to tomorrow, which is a day nearer the grave, the man who knows that the Americans will do something, the homeless men who marry prostitutes for money, the strivers and opium addicts alike, the devotees of placebos and the strategists who can solve all the difficulties provided only that it is given to them to dispense more aid, better directed, why not cheer them on instead of pity them?
I propose that false hopes are as good as true, provided that they cause no harm; and that anyhow between true and false we can but infrequently tell the difference. --Oksana had said: I was the kind of person who always had hope and never begged. --Now she always begged. --Shall we demean her former hope by calling it wrongheaded? --Until he's dead, who am I to say that the cancer patient is truly terminal?

Every man is rich or poor; says Adam Smith, to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a small part of these with which a man's own labour can supply him.
Well, then, what if, as did Thoreau, one rejects the division of labor?
Children, the unemployed, artistically inclined imaginations such as Elena's, all such people live in an undivided or at least less divided world.
People who by First World standards are underemployed, people with slow lives, divide their labor less than others.
Might there accordingly be some way for them to redefine their necessaries, conveniences and amusements back within reach?

Could it be that sharing resources and responsibilities works best when there is not much to share?
In that case, people with almost nothing and people with almost everything might be better off than the ones afflicted with relative poverty--who have enough to lose but not enough to be happy.
I prefer to hope and believe that a culture of communalism, however attenuated it may become as a result of material enrichment, can mitigate each and every one of the phenomena of poverty. Invisibility, deformity and unwantedness cannot defeat true neighborliness, at least not all the time. Dependence and accident-prone-ness are more powerful monsters: A band of refugees, or the dispossessed homeowners of Nan Ning, might start their journey to hell with all the mutual goodwill in the world, but should the impoverishment be poisonous enough, any resistance to it, single or collective, will be ineffective. But even if no other sustenance is available, unfortunate people can offer each other comfort, as they can when they have no medicine for pain. I remember the mothers and fathers who sat with their sanctioned children in Saddam Hussein Pediatric Hospital; my government would not let any medicines through, a freedom-loving policy which the doctors bitterly assured me had caused numbers of these children to die needlessly; but surely they were better off dying with than without their parents rocking them in their arms. As for numbness and estrangement, the same considerations apply.

Weakness, traditionally, is not seen as a virtue. Nor is weakness recognized as one of the more prized traits. Indeed only coward pacifists who are usually more two-faced than they are principled or more principled than they are loving, only these and idealistic college students and a few radicals who have forgotten even how to pick their nose (or picked it too often), only these are foolish enough to claim weakness as virtue--well, these and Jesus, but of course he meant it much differently.
Jesus, when he said, blessed are the weak, did not mean, and no way he ever could have meant, pursue weakness. Or go out there and get it for yourself. To think such a thing is just plain stupid at best. At worst, it's a vile form of hypocrisy and pompous patronization that leads to pleasuring oneself with the smell of one's own farts.
If I were to be such an asinine product of wealth and spoil as to suggest that weakness were a virtue, not only would I be considered arrogant, but I'd also be found guilty of an evil that disqualifies me from participation in the human race. It's not like that's happened to anyone before.

But for a moment, indulge me by withholding your indignation. Weakness can be a virtue. It takes a weak man to say this. And, though I may not be weak in some ways, I am weak in others. It has to do with benevolence, which is also a virtue. While it requires humility to accept benevolence, it requires weakness to be received. Charity always involves benevolence. This means Charity requires weakness. But what gives so many instances of charity their off-key twang is not that it involves weakness but that it only acknowledges that benevolence can flow one way.
When was the last time you accepted benevolence from the object of your charity? If no instance comes to mind, it is because you are not charitable or because you cannot see that an object of your charity has the capability (potential) to be benevolent towards you. Accept benevolence from the poor--they have it to give and often give it in greater quantities than the rich--and you do much for yourself. If you are not interested in your self, but rather in the selves of your charitable objects, you should recognize that you will never be able to refer to someone who receives your charity as anything but a nameless "they" or an even more distasteful "object of charity", in fact you just might find that you are not even benevolent.

But beyond this, if by some chance you are convinced a little, you are going to have to not only acknowledge your own weakness in order to receive benevolence, you are going to have to pursue this runt virtue in order to acquire it. Don't forget that virtues are formed by habits.

God is Dead

Ron Currie Jr.

Don't bother.

The Unconsoled

Kazuo Ishiguro

It was music that first brought us together, he said eventually. We would sit in the cafes in Herrengasse and talk about music. Or rather, I talked. I suppose I talked and talked. I remember once walking through the Volksgarten with her and describing in great detail, perhaps for a full hour, my feelings about Mullery's Ventilations. Of course, we were young, we had time to indulge ourselves in such things. Even in those days, she didn't talk so much, but she listened to what I had to say and I could see she was deeply moved. Oh yes. Incidentally, Mr Ryder, I say we were young, but then I suppose neither of us was as young as all that. We were both the sort of age when we might already have been married for some time. Perhaps she was feeling some sense of urgency, who knows? In any case we talked of getting married, I was so in love with her, Mr Ryder, from the first I was very much in love with her. And she was so beautiful then. Even now, if you saw her, you'd see how very beautiful she must have been then. But beautiful in a special sort of way. You could see immediately she had a sensitivity to the finer things. I don't mind admitting to you, I was very much in love with her. I can't tell you what it meant to me when she agreed to marry me. I thought my life would be a joy, a continuous unbroken joy. But then it was just a few days later, a few days after she agreed to marry me, she came to visit me in my room for the first time. I was at that time working at the Hotel Burgenhof, adn I was renting a room nearby in Glockenstrasse, beside the canal. Not exactly desirable, but a perfectly fine room. There were good bookshelves on one wall and an oak desk at the window. And as I say, it looked over the canal. It was winter, a splendid sunny winter's morning, there was a beautiful light coming into the room. Of course, I had tidied everything, made it just so. She came in and looked around, she looked all around. Then she asked, quietly: But where do you compose your music? I remember that very well, that actual instant, Mr Ryder, I remember it very vividly. I see it as a sort of turning point in my life. I don't exaggerate, sir. In many ways, I see it now, my present life started from that moment. Christine, standing by the window, that January light, her hand on the desk, just a few fingers as though to steady herself. She looked very beautiful. And she asked me that question with genuine surprise. You see, sir, she was puzzled. But where do you compose your music? There's no piano. I didn't know what to say. I saw in an instant there had been a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding of catastrophically cruel proportions. Can you blame me, sir, if I felt the temptation to save myself? I wouldn't have told an out and out lie. Oh no, not even to save myself. But it was a very difficult moment. I think of it now and I feel a shudder go through me, even now as I tell you this. But where do you compose your music? No, there's no piano, I said cheerfully. There's nothing. No manuscript paper, nothing. I've decided not to compose again for two years. That's what I said to her. I was very quick, I said it with no outward sign of distress or hesitation. I even gave a specific date on which I planned to return to my composing. But for the time being, no, I wasn't composing. What could I say, sir? did you expect me to take it lying down? To say to her: Oh dear, it's all been a misunderstanding. Naturally I release you from any obligation. Please, let's part herewith...Of course I could not, sir. You might think I was dishonest. That's too harsh. In any case, you see, at that point in my life what I said wasn't entirely a lie. As it happened, I had every intention of taking up an instrument one day, and yes, I wished to try my hand at composition.

Then at one point I went over to the table where there was a buffet, and I was helping myself to a few things when I realised Mr Piotrowski was standing there right next to me. I was still quite young then, I hadn't so much experience of celebrities, and I admit, yes, I was a little nervous. But then Mr Piotrowski smiled pleasantly, asked me if I was enjoying the evening, very quickly put me at my ease. And then he said: "I was just speaking to your most charming wife. She was telling me about her great love of Baudelaire. I had to confess to her I didn't know Baudelaire's work in any depth. She very correctly reprimanded me for this deplorable state of affairs. Oh, she made me thoroughly ashamed. I mean to put it right without delay. Your wife's love for the poet is absolutely infectious!" To which I nodded and said: "Yes, of course. She's always loved Baudelaire." "And with such passion," Piotrowski said. "She made me thoroughly ashamed." And that was all that took place, all that was said between us. But you see, Mr Ryder, my point is this. I had never known of her love of Baudelaire! Never even suspected it! You see what I am saying. She had never revealed this passion to me! And when Piotrowski said this to me, something fell into place. All of a sudden I saw clearly something I'd been trying not to see over the years. I mean, that she had always hidden certain parts of herself from me. Preserving them, as though contract with my coarseness would damage them. As I say, sir, I had perhaps always suspected it. That there was a whole side to herself she was preserving from me. And who could blame her? A woman of great sensitivity, brought up in a household such as hers. She had not hesitated to tell Piotrowski, but at no point during our years together had she once hinted of this love of Baudelaire. For the next several minutes I wandered about the reception hardly knowing what I was saying to people, just mouthing pleasantries, in a turmoil inside. Then I looked across the room, it must have been half an hour after the conversation with Piotrowski, I looked across the room and I saw her, my wife, laughing happily on the sofa beside Piotrowski. There was nothing flirtatious, you understand. Oh no, my wife has always been meticulous where propriety is concerned. But she was laughing with an ease I realised I had not seen since our walks together along the canal in the days before we were married. That's to say, before she realised. It was a long sofa and there were two others sitting on it, and some people were also sitting on the floor in order to be near Piotrowski. But Piotroski had just spoken to my wife and she was laughing happily. But it was not just this laugh, Mr Ryder, that spoke volumes to me. As I watched, I was standing on the other side of the room, as I watched, what happened next was this. Piotrowski until that point had been sitting on the edge of the sofa, his hands clasped around his knee, like so! As he laughed and made some remark to my wife, he began to recline, yes, as though he wished simply to sit back in the sofa. And as he began to recline, very swiftly, very deftly, my wife took a cushion from behind her and placed it for Piotrowski, so that by the time his head touched the back of the sofa, the cushion was there. It was done so swiftly, almost without thinking, a very graceful movement, Mr Ryder. And when I saw it, I felt my heart breaking. It was a movement so full of natural respect, a desire to be solicitous, to please in a small way. That little action, it revealed a whole realm of her heart she kept tightly closed to me. And I realised at that moment how deluded I had been. I realised then what I have known and never doubted since. I mean, sir, I realised she would leave me. Sooner or later. It was just a matter of time. Ever since that evening, I've known it.

Stephan, Stephan. Hoffman shook his head and placed a hand on his son's shoulder. I want you to know that we both think very highly of you. We're both immensely proud. But this idea of yours, this idea you've had all your life. I mean about...about your music. Your mother and I, we've never had the heart to tell you. Naturally, we wanted you to have your dreams. But this. All this --he gestured in the direction of the auditorium--this has all been a terrible mistake. We should never have let things get this far. You see, Stephan, the fact is this. Your playing is very charming. Extremely accomplished in its way. We've always enjoyed listening to you play at home. But music, serious music, music at the sort of level required tonight...that, you see, is another thing. No, no, don't interrupt, I'm trying to tell you something, something I should have said long ago. You see, this is the civic concert hall. Audiences, concert audiences, they are not like friends and relatives who listen sympathetically in the living room. Real concert audiences, they are used to standards, professional standards. Stephan, how can I put this?

Ishiguro is the most subtle writer I have ever read. He took 350 pages to set up the above scene and in those 350 fifty pages you wouldn't have imagined it was heading here, not because he didn't give you hints, but because all the hints were so dreadfully small--but very dense. I was almost going to put this book down, and then I found that I couldn't put it down because it was already wrapped around my heart. If you can understand this story and it doesn't make you cry, try again. But it's all a farce anyway.

The Trial

Franz Kafka

K. lived in a country with a legal constitution, there was universal peace, all the laws were in force; who dared seize him in his own dwelling? He had always been inclined to take things easily, to believe in the worst only when the worst happened, to take no care for the morrow even when the outlook was threatening. But that struck him as not being the right policy here, one could certainly regard the whole thing as a joke, a rude joke which his colleagues in the Bank had concocted for some unknown reason, perhaps because this was his thirtieth birthday, that was of course possible, perhaps he had only to laugh knowingly in these men's faces and they would laugh with him, perhaps they were merely porters from the street corner--they looked very like it--nevertheless his very first glance at the man Franz had decided him for the time being not to give away any advantage that he might possess over these people.

They were quite at liberty to watch him now while he went to a wall-cupboard where he kept a bottle of good brandy, while he filled a glass and drank it down to make up for his breakfast, and then drank a second to give him courage, the last only as a precaution, for the improbable contingency that it might be needed.

This question of yours, Sir, about my being a house painter--or rather, not a question, you simply made a statement--is typical of the whole character of this trial that is being foisted on me. You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such. But for the moment I do recognize it, on grounds of compassion, as it were. One can't regard it except with compassion, if one is to regard it all. I do not say that your procedure is contemptible, but I should like to present that epithet to you for your private consumption.

K. slowly walked after them, he recognized that this was the first unequivocal defeat that he had received from these people. There was no reason, of course, for him to worry about that, he had received the defeat only because he had insisted on giving battle. While he stayed quietly at home and went about ordinary vocations he remained superior to all these people and could kick any of them out of his path.

Titorelli drew his chair closer to the bed the continued in a low voice: "I forgot to ask you first what sort of acquittal you want. There are three possibilities, that is, definite, acquittal, ostensible acquittal, and indefinite postponement. Definite acquittal is, of course, the best, but I haven't the slightest influence on that kind of verdict. As far as I know, there is no single person who could influence the verdict of definite acquittal. The only deciding factor seems to be the innocence of the accused. Since you're innocent, of course it would be possible for you to ground your case on your innocence alone. But then you would require neither my help nor help from anyone.

Trust your government, your justice system, your society! Here's a story: an American man marries a Canadian woman. They live in Mississippi for a while and then both move to Vancouver, BC. Life goes along fine for ten years or so. Then they go back to Mississippi for a vacation, to see friends and family. It's a good vacation. Returning to Canada they go through a routine check and the man is told he cannot cross the border. He had gotten a DWI seventeen years ago and is not allowed to enter Canada for a year. He has kids, he has a wife, he has a home in Canada, but he is not allowed to return to it because of this. Now he is homeless in Washington State.
Laws are inflexible things, and impersonal. For all the faith we put in them, they can crush innocence as firmly as they crush guilt, as firmly as a bulldozer's teeth can scoop through hard packed dirt. Just remember, as much as you trust, so also should you fear.

Bobby Allison

David McCullough

Bobby Allison was born on Febuary 22nd, 1947; his name appeared in the Miami Herald as one of the city's four hundred middleschool spelling champions, but otherwise avoided the world's attention until after his death in 2008, when once again we were reminded by his obituary that he had indeed spent 61 years on this planet.

This weighty tome (682 pages if you an believe it) is not only remarkable as the most singular biography I have ever read, but also for its dashing, almost arrogant confidence. Bobby Allison is the only biography I have ever found that did not need a reason to justify its subject. The personage and life of Bobby Allison are entirely commonplace.
As McCullough says in his preface, "After writing so many biographies of the famous--presidents, saints, CEO's, generals, politicians, and aritists--I thought it was about time to aim my lens at something much more universal: a normal guy." And just such a one is Bobby Allison. But Bobby Allison proves that no normality is normal. For everyone, the guy who takes out your trash, the person who serves your latte, your coworker, your friend, the people on tv, your mechanic, your uncle, even, maybe, your pet, live more exciting lives than most that could be imagined. That's why Bobby Allison is a biography to read; that's why Bobby Allison is going to change how you think about fame.

The Quest for Corvo

A J A Symons

His becoming Catholic I could easily understand. The attraction of the Catholic Faith for the artistic temperament is a phenomenon which has been the subject of many novels, and is one of the facts of psychology.

Whatever is of good, a man must get not from a teacher, but from his own toil. The man who wants to write Good English will, ultimately, write good English, and his work will have the supreme merit of being rare.

The first Intervention occurred on May the 26th, 2009. The stop sign at the corner of Broad and Alabama was decorated with Christmas tinsel. Nobody noticed.
The second Intervention occurred on June the 9th, 2009. A parakeet in a cage was hung from the bus stop on the 1100 block of Thompson St. This also was a failure, although several people did take pictures and one woman got bird poop on her new coat.
The third Intervention occurred on June the 17th, 2009. The intersection of James and Duncan downtown was yellow-washed--lights, sidewalk, trees, street, benches, and even fire hydrants were painted yellow in the early morning hours. Somehow no one saw who did it. The police called it an act of vandalism. The media made a joke of it, were reprimanded by the mayor and obediently blamed the degenerate youth of this corrupt modern age. For some time, at least all day, the intersection became something of an attraction--people walking into the large yellowness and turning around, marveling at their surroundings. But people quickly forget.
The fourth Intervention occurred on July the 21st, 2009. Flower petals cleverly secreted into the ventilation system at the mall released bringing an indoor shower of petals that lasted for more than fifteen minutes. Children went wild. Even some adults surrendered their better judgment and began to throw petals about like people splashing in a pool or playing in the snow. The mall authorities did not know how to protect the shoppers or from what. There were outcries, mostly of joy. However, the mall was closed early and the shoppers sent home--without flowers. The mall stated that it would treat as theft of property any removal of petals by unauthorized individuals. The petals were evidence--the mall's evidence. This time all the local media picked up the story, and one intelligent reporter connected this act to the yellow-washing. Nobody listened. One of the mall security cameras had captured an image of the foot of the alleged miscreant. He was called a terrorist. The foot, in a white tennis shoe that looked more like a doggy chew toy, was deemed to be unequivocally terroristic. The city stationed police at the mall twenty-four hours a day, for a month. No more was heard of these particular terrorists. Many people however, in the weeks after the incident, found their gardens pillaged. Flower gardens all over town were depleted and some even noted a marked decrease in the number of dandelions around town.
The fifth Intervention occurred on August the 2nd, 2009. Every book in the public library (all three branches) was turned upside down. Minutes after opening, patrons came to library staff members commenting meekly that they just thought the librarians might want to know, but many of the books were turned upside down, well actually all of them were. The librarians handled the situation with grace and the patrons were quickly calmed, but the infection of the wound rooted itself in the librarians' pride. They made a public announcement. The recent wave of vandalism plaguing the city must stop. There was no doubt that these senseless acts were the rites of some new gang's initiation. The gang was probably Latino. The police chief, feeling somewhat slandered, asked, what acts? To which the librarians replied by drawing neat little connections between the upside down books at the library, the petals at the mall, the yellow intersection downtown, three car wrecks on the interstate, a bank robbery, the death of the chief reference librarian's dog, the recent rise in roadkill--especially of opossums--and finally the loss of morals in society. The chief of police said, Oh. now with several Interventions actually being linked, the game was on.