Search Results for: fathertongue

From Man Alive! – “The integrity of art.”

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 8. The integrity of art. When I talk about Mothertongue and Fathertongue, I know that many people are straining to divide them up in their minds, to … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor | Leave a comment

From Man Alive! – “A calculus of morality on a first-grade number line.”

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 7. A calculus of morality on a first-grade number line. You live an easy life, and that has made it easy for you to be thoughtless and … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor | Leave a comment

From Man Alive! – “The greatest love of all.”

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 5. The greatest love of all. What’s the purpose of life? Scruffy, bearded teenagers of all ages have been asking that question for thousands of years, and … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor | Leave a comment

Who do you have to kill to find a good villain around here?

I worked on the ideas that became Man Alive! for thirty-three years, since I was nineteen years old. And the problem I started with was more practical than philosophical: I was a young wannabe novelist, and I could not for … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor | Leave a comment

From Man Alive! – “The greatest invention in the history of humanity.”

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. Extract from Chapter 4. The greatest invention in the history of humanity. In the last chapter, I raised the idea of your being stranded on a desert island. That’s a … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor | Leave a comment

Stop cursing the darkness by turning on your mind!

I’m in the midst of writing a book in defense of the human mind. I keep calling it an essay or a treatise, but by now I realize, to my chagrin, that it’s going to turn out to be a … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor | 3 Comments

Q: If a man goes dancing with a Dancing Bear, what, would you suppose, is his first name?

A: Claude. It’s a Fathertongue joke. You can run it by any young kids you may know to see if they have graduated to childhood. A child would have to understand Fathertongue to get the joke — to swap the … Continue reading

Posted in Casual Friday | Leave a comment

The purpose of civilization…

[I’m pulling this over from BloodhoundBlog from 2007. The back-story is the tragic death of a young father. –GSS] I make my living as a hard-headed, practical man, but I live in a very abstract world. Because of the Anglin … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor | Leave a comment

Silence and distance and lies…

This is from my book The Unfallen. In essence, it is the countermelody to Loving Cathleen, below. I really like these two people, and I really like to let them talk. This is the furthest remove from high-action genre fiction, … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor | Leave a comment

Number Two from a Dancing Bear: American voters don’t rebel because they’re no smarter than fish!

I swear, you just can’t make this stuff up. The Wall street Journal insists that American democracy works (it does?) because voters are no smarter than fish: Why are democracies so vibrant even when composed of uninformed citizens? According to … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor | Leave a comment