The First Amendment Has The

The Magician Seemed To Promise That Something Torn To Bits Might Be Mended Without A Seam, That What Had Vanished Might Reappear, That A Scattered Handful Of Doves Or Dust Might Be Reunited By A Word, That A Paper Rose Consumed By Fire Could Be Made To Bloom From A Pile Of Ash. But Everyone Knew That It Was Only An Illusion. The True Magic Of This Broken World Lay In The Ability Of Things It Contained To Vanish, To Become So Thoroughly Lost, That They Might Never Have Existed In The First Place.

I Suppose There Is Something Appealing About A Word That Everyone Uses With Absolute Confidence But On Whose Exact Meaning No Two People Can Agree. The Word That I'm Thinking Of Right Now Is Genre, One Of Those French Words, Like Crêpe, That No One Can Pronounce Both Correctly And Without Sounding Pretentious.

That's A Big Trunk," James Said, As We Jammed In The Leathery Old Case That Looked So Much Like The Black Heart Of Some Leviathan. "it Fits A Tuba, Three Suitcases, A Dead Dog, And A Garment Bag Almost Perfectly." "that's Just What They Used To Say In The Ads," I Said.

What Smells Strongly Of Crap To One Generation - Victorian Penny Dreadfuls, The Music Of The Archies, The Lone Ranger Radio Show, Blaxploitation Films Of The Seventies - So Often Becomes A Fruitful Source Of Inspiration, Veneration, And Study For Those To Come, While Certified Great And Worthy Art Molders And Fades On Its Storage Rack, Giving Off An Increasingly Powerful Whiff Of Naphthalene.

Misogyny Comes Naturally To A Young Man In His Late Teens; It Is A Function Of The Powerful Homosocial Impulses That Flower Along Fraternity Row, That Drove The Mod Movements Of The Middle Sixties And Late Seventies, That Lie At The Heart Of Every Rock Band Formed By Men Of That Age.