Category: Yo Ivanhoe

I received this message –or these messages– from my old friend Ruckert today, scrawled in his almost microscopic handwriting across the back of several subscription cards for a magazine called Country Living: Late last night, as I was in the basement digging around for a book on the Black Hole of Calcutta, I stumbled across…

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by…

It hadn’t been good for quite some time, but it was time for them to admit to themselves and to each other that now it really wasn’t good, and wasn’t going to get any better. Neither of them liked the doctor, a young Indian. He was a man who’d built too much science around himself,…

When I was a kid, there was this store out at the mall that sold cheese from all over the world. The place reeked. They must have had hundreds of different kinds of cheese. I like cheese as much as the next guy, but you wouldn’t think there would be any real need for so…

The day had been hot, and it was apparent that the night would bring little relief. There was no wind, nothing but the humidity and the stillness and the swelling sleigh bells of the cicadas from the trees. Up and down the block people were sitting out on the stoops of the apartment houses and…

I was sitting in this hotel bar in Sacramento one night a few months ago. It was early in the evening and the place was empty. Some friends of mine were out on a golf course somewhere and I was bored out of my mind and wished like hell I’d never agreed to come along…