The photographic record is a distinctly modern artifact. Before the portable camera, visual record emanated from the imagination, translated by an artist’s hand. The photograph captured visual images in a deceptively accurate rendering, with detail that could be placed like a scrim over our eyes and keep images unmarred. Smart observers point to the inaccuracies […]
Step out from behind your counter and walk to the door to take in the brisk afternoon air of this gloomy Spring day. You always look down Beale toward the river, where the sky is lighter. It’s been a slow morning, been a slow day, been a slow month, the city on edge since the […]
Chief Massasoit sold the town to Miles Standish in 1649 for some coats, hatchets and knives. The land was low and swampy in the east, rising to rolling pastures and fertile ground in the west. The business of making a life played out over the generations. Families settled, young men went off to war, fortunes […]
Plate 36 A Harvest of Death. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. July 1863 Photographed by Timothy H. O’Sullivan Slowly, over the misty fields of Gettysburg—as all reluctant to expose their ghastly horrors to the light—came the sunless morn, after the retreat by Lee’s broken army. Through the shadowy vapors, it was, indeed, a “harvest of death” that was […]
For thirteen years, an entire nation introduced a law that made the sale of liquor illegal, but did not outlaw the consumptionof liquor. This inconsistency created an entire culture of play, where an entire generation connived to find ways to get a hold of booze, get drunk and have fun. This game funded the explosion […]
Come back with me through the generations, but don’t leave yourself behind. Shed the trappings of our age, the distractions, the objects, the munificence. Keep me in mind, your friends, the acquaintances you take lunch with, the people who you stand in line at the grocery store with. Keep us all in mind. Let your […]
The heavenly blisses Of his kisses Fill me with ecstasy. He’s sweet just like chocolate candy And just like honey from the bee. I’m Just Wild About Harryfrom Shuffle Along. In 1921, Broadway jumped to East 63rd Street on New York’s West Side with the first integrated musical to make it big on stage. The hit number was […]
On The Meeting Of García Lorca And Hart Crane Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane’s been drinking and has no idea who this curious Andalusian is, unable even to speak the language of poetry. The young man who brought them together knows both Spanish and English, but he has a headache from jumping back and forth from […]
We walked down the long halls and through the ruined rooms a little apart because things were over but we still didn’t know. You’d slept with Toby while I was gone, and when I found out later I was bruised and confused, because he was insipid and weak, and your sleeping with him made me […]
Hammett is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of is the record of man’s devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written […]