For someone enamored of success and not inclined to resign himself to his fate, it was a curse to live in a less than aristocratic neighborhood, study in elite colleges through a scholarship, and not be rich but have wealthy classmates and friends. This was the case of Francis Scott Fitzgerald, an attractive and very talented young man, doomed to ply his charm among clans whose slick offspring played polo, danced in the Country Club with rich heiresses who were a bit vain and "had a voice full of money". He would see these women get into the cream and tobacco colored convertibles of their boyfriends, their bonnets tied with ribbons of tulle around their luminous chins, in the shade of chestnut trees on the elegant Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, Minnesota and perhaps in his subconscious, he resolved to hurl his life against that mirror.
Posts published in “Essays”
As the inauguration of Trump fast approaches, many frightened Americans talk of moving to Canada, in much the same way frightened Americans spoke of moving abroad when George Bush became President. But Canada and other safe haven countries only want us these days if we are wealthy or possessed of highly desirable technological skills. Thus we common folk must consider other responses to the new regime.
Early in 1968 Josh Gould and friends opened a coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas, offering a respite from the Army to GIs stationed at nearby Fort Hood. Dissent within the ranks was being expressed in myriad…
Bad regimes are in the business of making us forget. More than anything they want to cancel our feeling for the impossible that twists some of us into impractical romantics. Teenagers tend to pass through…
Just south of Healdsburg on the east side of Highway 101 was the Campbell Ranch. Almost every resident of Healdsburg and many on the North Coast knew the ranch with the friendly two-story house sitting…
So many cubes of braised tofu, countless Hunan broccoli specials; turned out they could legitimately be written off and called research. Frequenting of Sino-American eateries, from an IRS perspective, had been strictly recreational — until…
In my mind’s eye, I see Jerry running along the fence line, snapping at the tolerant Malamute neighbor. An incongruous pair, Jerry is a 12-pound short-legged Jack Russell with a coat somewhere between broken and…
The internet cannot convey how big the New York Times played the story headlined "Beneficiary of Electroshock Therapy Emerges as its Leading Evangelist" in the January 1 print edition. The top half of the page…