So, here’s the thing–I think the problem with the therapeutic culture is bigger than excusing murderers because they couldn’t help themselves.  If that was all this strain of the culture was doing, it would be far more benign than it actually is. What it’s mostly doing, however, is redefining undesirable personal traits–especially in children–as somehow…

Okay, that was unfair.   It snowed yesterday for about an hour and a half, then stopped, then snowed for another hour and a half, and it didn’t stick.  But it was still annoying, especially as we’d had all the heat off for two days, then had to put it back on, then turn it off…

Okay, I’ve looked at the comments, and I think there are a few things I need to straighten out here. First, for those of you who wandered in here not because you already read my books, I already have a book contract with a major New York publishing house, St. Martin’s Press.  They also publish …

So, I have a question. I was thinking that, when I finally finish this book I’m working on, I’d post to the web site–not the blog–one of these things I work on for fun that I know no modern publisher would ever touch. That is, fairly straightforward fair-play classic detective stories, complete with amateur detectives…

So, it’s been a week, and the situation is nowhere nearer resolved than it was, bu I seem to have reached a point of emotional exhaustion where I just can’t stress any farther past where I am, so I can read again. Sort of. In terms of this level of not being able to read,…

I’ll admit it.  I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to think of something to say.  Part of it is The Thing, which is ongoing as we speak, and still in a very bad place, but it’s also that it turns out that I respond very badly to stress physically.  The cold, or whatever…

This has been a long, bad week-end, possibly one of the worst in my life, and I’ve had a couple of doozies. And at some point, I will write about this in detail–in fact, I fully intend to, in escruciating detail–but at the moment I’m not sure I should, and even if it doesn’t matter,…

I still think the most interesting thing, to me, about this blog, is finding out what conclusions people jump to, and what assumptions they hold, that would never have occurred to me in a million years. Let me start by saying that I was not talking about giving high end writers “a place” in the…

Here are a couple of snapshots, from the week. The second one:  I was trying to show a class how to structure a standard compare and  contrast essay.  Forget the fact that this is the sort of thing they’re supposed to learn in middle school, I was slogging away at it, doing my best, and…

So here is  Theodore Dalrymple on “ideology,” which sounds a lot like what I was calling narratives http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_1_otbie-ideology.html And that should make up for the fact that my week has gotten a little complicated.