The Geecologist

James

James

Apr 26, 2025 | Fiction | 0 comments

I walked outside and over to the big fire, where the men were sitting. I was greeted and then I sat. We talked some about what happened to a runaway over at another farm. “Yeah, they beat him real good,” Doris said. Doris was a man, but that didn’t seem to matter to...
The Argonauts

The Argonauts

Sep 14, 2024 | Fiction | 0 comments

Before we met, I had spent a lifetime devoted to Wittgenstein’s idea that the inexpressible is contained—inexpressibly!—in the expressed. This idea gets less air time than his more reverential Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent, but it is, I think,...
Believe in People: The Essential Karel Capek

Believe in People: The Essential Karel Capek

Nov 20, 2021 | Essays, Non-Fiction | 0 comments

The cliche is blamed for spoiling language and style. While this may be true, its destructive power is much more profound. The cliche blurs the difference between truth and untruth. If it were not for cliches, there wouldn’t be demagogues and public lies, and it...
Landmarks

Landmarks

Aug 29, 2020 | Non-Fiction, Travel | 0 comments

I am wary of the dangers of fetishizing dialect and archaism – all that mollocking and sukebinding Stella Gibbons spoofed so brilliantly in Cold Comfort Farm (1932). Wary, too, of being seen to advocate a tyranny of the nominal – a taxonomic need to point and name,...
The Etymologicon

The Etymologicon

Jul 2, 2020 | Geekery, Non-Fiction | 0 comments

Heckling is, or once was, the process of removing the knots from wool. Sheep are notoriously lackadaisical about their appearance, so before their wool can be turned into a nice warm jumper it must be combed. It’s easy to see how combing wool and teasing out the knots...