“Barbara used to say that he didn’t phrase things strongly enough when he visited his doctor. She’d ask, ‘Did you tell him about your back? Did you tell him you were in agony?’ and Liam would say, ‘Well, I mentioned I was experiencing some discomfort.’ Barbara would roll her eyes. So now he leaned forward in his chair. ‘I have a very, very serious concern,’ he said. ‘I really need to talk about this. I feel I’m going crazy.’” –Anne Tyler, Noah’s Compass, 2009 “CONFUSION CURLS LIKE A VISCOUS FOG ABOUT THE REINSTATED MIND OF DR. ALEC HOLLAND — HE … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

“Barrett watched the wrangling without pleasure. It all seemed impossibly dull and dreary to him, this quibbling over the phraseology of a manifesto. That was essentially what he had expected to find here; a bunch of futilitarian hairsplitters in a draft basement room, battling furiously over minute semantic differences. Were these the revolutionaries who would hold back the world from chaos? Hardly. Hardly.” –Robert Silverberg, Hawksbill Station, 1968 “SEA-BLUE AND BLOOD RED: THESE ARE THE COLORS THAT WASH PAST THE GOLDEN AVENGER’S EYES AS HE STRUGGLES, DESPERATELY, AGAINST HIS OWN ARMOR! FOR MERE HEARTBEATS AGO, BENEATH THE CHILL WATERS OF … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

“Now he was fifty-four years old and was as intriguing to corporate America as an airplane built from mud. He could not find work, could not find clients. He had moved from Schwinn to Huffy to Frontier Manufacturing Partners to Alan Clay Consulting to sitting at home watching DVDs of the Red Sox winning the Series in ’04 and ’07. The game when they hit four consecutive home runs against the Yankees. April 22, 2007. He’d watched these four and a half minutes a hundred times and each viewing brought him something like joy. A sense of rightness, of order. … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

“I made a big entrance when I arrived in my flying DeLorean, which I’d obtained by completing a Back to the Future quest on the planet Zemeckis. The DeLorean came outfitted with a (non-functioning) flux capacitor, but I’d made several additions to its equipment and appearance. First, I’d installed an artificially intelligent onboard computer named KITT (purchased in an online auction) into the dashboard, along with a matching red Knight Rider scanner embedded in the DeLorean’s grill. Then I’d outfitted the car with an oscillation overthruster, a device that allowed it to travel through solid matter. Finally, to complete my … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature