Professor Sea Gull

Professor Sea Gull

Throughout the nineteen-twenties Gould haunted the office of The Dial, now dead, the most highbrow magazine of the time. Finally, in its April, 1929, issue, The Dial printed one of his shorter essays, “Civilization.” In it he rambled along, referring to skyscrapers...
Dream State

Dream State

The house was cramped and musty and low ceilinged. There was beige carpet from the seventies, bric-a-brac on every windowsill, secondhand furniture that smelled incurably of smoke. Someone had taped a hand-drawn sketch of a mallard to the lintel above the stairs,...
Hope In The Dark

Hope In The Dark

On January 18, 1915, six months into the first world war, as all Europe was convulsed by killing and dying, Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal, “The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think.” Dark, she seems to say,...
The Day It Rained Forever

The Day It Rained Forever

And The Rock Cried Out “When I was a young man I was very full of wildness and ideas. I read all of the books from France by a man named Jules Verne. I see you know his name. But at night I many times thought I must be an inventor. That is all gone by; I never...
Symbols and Signs

Symbols and Signs

For the fourth time in as many years, they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to take to a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind. Desires he had none. Man-made objects were to him either hives of evil, vibrant with a malignant...