I could use some free publicity about now, so could one of you please load a cooler with a bunch of my books and leave it in Times Square? Just don’t tell me when or if you’re going to do it. Or who you are. Or anything.Thank you.(/irony)

Via Patricia, this really astounding virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel. It’s got everything but the Pope!

[Update: Due to the vagaries of Blogger, this essay was originally published as if it were written on April 26. Thanks to Ken, I’ve learned how to adjust the time stamp, so here it is, as if it were new.]I just got round to reading an essay/review by novelist/critic James Wood published a month or […]

War’s tragedy doesn’t end with the war, nor does trauma end when the precipitating cause goes away. When my father’s generation came home from the Second World War, a lot of them brought the war home with them. The traditional cure for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in those days was lots of alcohol, followed by kicking […]