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As you might guess if you’ve been reading awhile, I’m a wee bit critical, skeptical of things, generally not happy with much that I read and less that I hear in conversation. Erm. It’s a family trait, and I suppose in some ways I should be thankful for it as, ultimately, it’s likely responsible (first) for my father’s escape from a household in which his mother was wearing his handmedowns and (next) my transcendence of a situation in which I lived in a house with no reading material other than Jonathan Livingston Seagull, whatever that is or was other than an appropriate if cheap wedding present at a certain time and place.

The critical annihilation of peers is a particularly dark and perhaps extremely efficient form of self-motivation, one that provides mountains to climb and rivers to cross where, to the eye of the ordinary guy on the street, elevation and depth there are none.

We’d, my family, sit at the kitchen table for dinner and talk shit about our friends and neighbors. Sometimes the relatives. Unspoken was the critique of ourselves, which nonetheless was constant and total, of course. A hellish start – can’t really imagine what something like charity would be like, save when I’m paid to perform it as a teacher, and in that case perform it I certainly do.

But, no, I don’t like much that I read and less that I hear. Visceral and undeniable, this feeling of disappointment and (ugh) antipathy. Especially when it comes to people who do the same sort of thing as me, in any sense whether real or prospective.

(Confessional, this blog is. Jesus. You should hear the things that I don’t tell you though… What franticness it is to be me…)

Still and despite all this, I really, really like Ange Mlinko’s stuff for The Nation. (Ha!) It has the undeniable sniff of real intelligence. A bit overwhelming when you happen upon it, the sniff of that. You should go read some – stuff like this is rare in a day and age like ours, or really anytime and anywhere.