TNY weekend reader: what the road to Hell is paved with
(image: carolita johnson)
Anyone read “Vegetable Love,” or did you, like me, spend a lot more time ogling the breasts on Eve in the illustration by Exem Story? She looks like Tintin’s stripper sister. And I sincerely mean it when I say: those breasts are magnificent. (Notice, while you’re looking at boobs, that Adam looks like he’s wondering why he has no nipples at all. ) But what do exquisite double-D breasts have to do with vegetarianism, you may well wonder. Who cares!
For the record, I have eaten black pudding in Scotland, and enjoyed it immensely. I couldn’t do that if I was a Pythagorian: Steven Shapin explains everything you need to know about the moral, practical, mathematical, and religious implications of vegetarianism throughout the history of mankind.
Ian Parker’s “Digging for Dodos,” not online, contains one heart-wrenching line in it, written by a Dutchman in the 1500’s: “Because there were no inhabitants living there who made them afraid, so nor were they afraid of us, but just remained sitting, allowing us to beat them to death.” And so begins the end of the “dodoarsen” (“fat-ass”), or Dodo Bird.
Amos Oz’s “Heirs” left me agog. Which isn’t a bad thing. Shades of Kafka and Camus. Self-sufficient as a story, with or without explanation, but if you know what went down in that story, feel free to let me know. My paranoid literary criticism skills (which require placing myself in the author’s head, a very disagreeable sensation after years and years of it) are on strike these days, allowing me to enjoy a story or not, as the case may be.
“Azzam the American,” by Raffi Khatchadourian left me agog in the bad way, though. A brilliant reportage on a young American turned terrorist, extremely insightful, but somehow leaving one feel even more helpless to understand at the end.
