‘The Birds’…and Other Creepiness

If you haven’t read Daphne du Maurier’s short story, The Birds, you haven’t begun to see just how creepy an ordinary thing can be. This technique is sometimes called “The Freudian uncanny” – a way of investing ordinary things with creeping horror. Many writers have done it (including Ray Bradbury with tennis shoes, a children’s…

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Schoolhouse Hell

My children have always liked school. They participate pretty avidly and just as much in the academic part as the social part. They think it is comical that I hated school and that I hate school now, on their behalf. I might have hated graduate school less than I hated kindergarten, but I did hate…

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Would you want to know your last…everything?

A friend and I are talking about the death penalty and she says she would be “for” it if it was certain that it was administered fairly – that is, according to race and socio-economic status, but also, if it could be certain, every time, that the person did what they said he did (and…

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Shakespeare’s Son

I am reading Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, about the son of William Shakespeare and Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway.  It is a heartbreaking story about parenthood — its delights and its dangers. Shakespeare is never named but it is made clear that this is the bard of Stratford upon Avon, who later writes a play called…

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