"€œBut then there"€™d be no story."€ That was my mother's singsong refrain whenever I"€™d complain that some film we were watching made no sense. To this day, my ...

Everyone supposes that he is the world authority on his own life, especially on his own thoughts and experiences. But is this really so? I began to doubt it when, the other day, I ...

One of those self important, so called pundits once asked Norman Mailer if fascism was coming to America. The pompous one had once worked for Time magazine, so Norman answered him ...

Yesterday a young man asked me to recommend a must-read book, the one that meant the most to me. My answer to that question hasn"€™t changed since it was published in 1988: ...

Geriatric whore Madonna, that Italian slut who sucked and fucked her way to the top of the pop charts sometime wayyyyy back in the early 1980s and has been pooping out hits ever ...

The only thing worse than a man is a white man, am I right? They start off as violent little bastards, biting Pop-Tarts into guns, and before you know it, they"€™re raping their ...

For even the most mildly sentient among us, living in the modern world is like being crucified on an old rugged cross of perpetual annoyance. Public discourse"€”if you can call ...

When, a little more than 45 years ago, we arrived in the city of Peshawar from Afghanistan, it seemed a peaceful and romantic place. True enough, the Khyber Pass had not been safe ...

The late Jean-Claude Duvalier, better known as Baby Doc, played only a small part in my life. I arrived in Haiti for the first time two years after his downfall, during the ...

I used to think that no one would ever again smell like my grandmother: that is to say, of naphthalene mothballs. She had them even in her handbag in case a moth was lurking ...

When I arrived in the city of Maiduguri nearly thirty years ago, everyone was away at the public executions. It was a ghost town until the spectators returned as from a football ...

Yesterday a young woman who was unknown to me except at third hand died. She was the friend of a friend of my wife. Considering that I was personally unacquainted with her, and ...

It is common for aging men, worn by the long years of drink and skirt-chasing and strenuous dissolution in the fleshpots of Asia, or any available fleshpots, to remember their ...

Experts agree that 2013 was the most racist year since the one that started the Civil War. Everywhere you looked someone or something was being racist, even asparagus. Most of ...

"€™Tis the season of reminiscence and prognostication. Let's get the future out of the way first. I"€™ve made the same three predictions every January for the last thirty ...

As someone who's offended by nothing but annoyed by everyone, I found no shortage of people this past year to stoke the angry embers of my irascible soul. Try as I may to shield ...