Appreciating Jack Appreciating
Jack Kerouac, Selected Letters: 1940-1956, v. 1 As I’m convinced of the the utility of “pulling”* from my reading, I found the following gems in some of Kerouac’s letters up till he had to deal…
Category: Correspondence
Dear Ziva
Dear Ziva, I’ve read two of Hillel Halkin’s books: Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist’s Polemic and A Complicated Jew: Selected Essays. (I loved his translation of Sholem Aleichem [Tevye the Dairyman and…
Stolen at Gunpoint
I’m grateful to have come across Kari’s kind correspondence in a file this evening. Dear Mark, I just wanted to drop you a note to thank you for taking the time to write The Book…
Serendipity
I was searching for one thing on my laptop, and I came across this feedback from a SLU student in 2006… Dear Dr. Chmiel, I am writing you to finally submit my insertion. I apologize…
A Letter from 2009
Thursday 26 February 2009 Dear Blair, Sorry it has taken so long to respond to your simple question—but as you are a teacher, I can probably count on your understanding. You wrote: “From everything you’ve…
How To Generate/Instigate Community
Invite 4 people over for a potluck and movie; I recommend Branagh’s Belfast. Do a regular Zoom with 2 or 3 of your best SLU friends, say every quarter, with or without certain topics, questions…
Dear Barista
There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s movie, Stardust Memories, where Martians come to earth, and Woody Allen’s character, Sandy Bates, seeks their wisdom about the meaning of life, and he has this exchange with them:…
Dear Anya
Thank you for your cool list of queries which I saw after I got back from vacation at Blue-Eye, Missouri! I will start with an easy one: “Favorite Book”— The Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoevskyas translated by…
Biographilia
I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For, not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,…