Tag: reading

The whole and entire purpose for Writing (outside of its own).

2010 Roundup: Top Posts

IT’S DE RIGUEUR FOR NEWS outlets to wrap up the year with a look at their Big Stories, and we at Metaphorager.Net are no exception despite that we’re only a “news outlet” in the sense of “what’s news to me.”…

First Graf: Moby-Dick

SO FAR, IT HAS TAKEN me two years to read Herman Melville’s classic of monomania and cetology, mostly because I don’t want to finish. And so I haven’t, yet. It’s the language. Melville rolls so many word-clad notions around his…

First Graf: Winnie-the-Pooh

“GENTLE FUN FOR ENGLISH TAOISTS” is as good a description as any of A. A. Milne’s two booksful of stories of the Hundred-Acre Wood’s most famous resident. These are not children’s tales any more than “Bullwinkle” or “Le Morte d’Arthur”…

First Graf: VALIS

IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH OF 1974, science-fiction author Philip K. Dick had a series of experiences which might have been psychosis, hallucination or divine grace. Phil often tended toward the last explanation, at least in print, and based a handful…

First Graf: The DQ of UK

THIS TITLE DOESN’T REFER TO either German nobility, soft ice cream or the British Isles, but the first paragraph (“graf” in news-speak) of one of my favorite novellae, H.P. Lovecraft‘s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Though mostly famous for his…

Harvey Pekar Z”TL

A MOMENT OF SILENCE WOULD be inappropriate to mark the death this morning of autobiographer, comix legend and music critic Harvey Pekar, since (depending on your view) the former Cleveland Heights resident is right now either a) arguing with “God,”…