This Thing of Darkness

Old virus ain’t quite done with Mr. Daddy yet. Still got a thing or two to teach him. Gonna pick him out of his bed and toss him on the bathroom floor where he’ll heave and wretch, his knotted guts exploding out of him. He’ll shake and shiver under five blankets and all his winter clothes. He’s known some pain in his time—Vietnam, working in the fields, his daddy’s belt—but nothing like this. This fever has Mr. Daddy like the whale had Jonah, and it’s going to take him deeper than he’s ever been, so deep he thinks he’s not coming back. He has fever dreams and waking visions, unable to distinguish which is which: he sees himself dying here alone, unmourned by wife or children. He swears to God: no more drinking, no more carrying on. But when the fever spits him back out, Mr. Daddy picks himself up off the floor, checks himself over—no breaks, no lasting injuries—cackles: If I can handle that, I can handle anything.

—Dallas Crow

"This Thing of Darkness" originally appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Red Rock Review.

A Question I Never Imagined

"What's your favorite kind of ground-rule double?"

—W. (8 years old)

Line of the Week (Or Month) (Or Season) (Or Whatever)

"It is an honor / to learn to replace one hope with another."

—Denis Johnson

On Liking "On Disliking God"

It's rare that a blog post approaches the realm of literature, but I think Eric Treanor may have pulled it off in this brief poignant essay.

My Kind of Minnesota Trout Stream (Part 1)

My Kind of Minnesota Trout Stream (Part 2)

New Lynx

I have been a desultory blogger at best during 2011 so far, but I have just cleaned up and updated the Lynx! at right. I have taken down some old ones that have been quieter than Corvus this year, and I've added three new ones: Ephemeral Firmament, Grantland, and Long Form.

Ephemeral Firmament replaces Omnivoracious, and it is as brainy and literate as the names indicate, and the new version is probably a little quirkier than the previous one as there is no longer corporate editorial oversight of an any kind.

I have my doubts about Grantland, especially after reading the recent Bill Simmons profile in the New York Times Magazine, but the Chuck Klosterman piece I read first, "Three-Man Weave," about a 1988 North Dakota junior college basketball game was pretty charming, though not as transcendent as I had hoped it would be. The note at the end of it crediting additional reporting to four other people (one of them a Klosterman) has me wondering what kind of reporting factory Chuck K. is running these days. Kinda like the idea of a reporter doing his own legwork, especially on a piece that has a personal angle as this one does. An additional reporter count of four sounds like something the Times might use to cover a major international event like an earthquake or a terrorist attack that requires reporters on different continents piecing things together. I am also a fan of the name, which according to the Times, comes more from the folks at ESPN than Simmons. Corporate oversight might help reign in Simmons the way that Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland helped make Sting bearable.

Long Form could be my biggest time sink on the interwebs since I learned you could find things like 1977 Patti Smith concert footage on YouTube. Nearly endless offerings of literary journalism from the most recent (there was a prominent link to "Three-Man Weave") to the depths of the archives. I've already picked out my next article: "Papa," a profile of the dead godfather of soul that appeared in GQ in 2009. Check out this teaser:

"When James Brown died on Christmas Day 2006, he left behind a fortune worth tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars. The problem is, he also left behind fourteen children, sixteen grandchildren, eight mothers of his children, several mistresses, thirty lawyers, a former manager, an aging dancer, a longtime valet, and a sister who’s really not a sister but calls herself the Godsister of Soul anyway."

Yeah, I'm in.