Saturday 4/25/26 We've seen many prose offs in these pages in which a story by someone who won a Guggenheim is pitted against a story of mine. The Guggenheim is as corrupt and farcical as anything in publishing. The award--which is a $40,000 grant--claims to provide financial support to a writer of clear talent who has shown, through their work and devotion to that work, their productivity, a vision on which they deliver and seek to continue to do so, expanding all the while.

Saturday 4/25/26 No writing of any kind like any of it. The last writer. The only one that could never be mistaken for AI. Whatever he's writing. It could only be him, and nothing else and no one else. This is from a lengthy work on spring horror films, which will also be in the horror film book, pertaining to David Gladwell's 1964 short film, An Untitled Film. But obviously a lot more as well. Fall is the most aromatic season, but spring is the runner-up. We know the smell o

Saturday 4/25/26 The last time the Red Sox lost 100 games was in 1965. Rubber Soul had yet to come out. Highway 61 Revisited was released about a month before the season finished. Before that was back in the 1930s (then end of the 1920s and the start of the 1930s was a dark time for the Old Towne Team. They languished in the mire while the Yankees soared in the sky. These 2026 Red Sox may give those 1965 Red Sox a run for their futile money. 100 losses is a possibility. This

Friday 4/24/26 It should be immediately clear to anyone who sees me inside of the Bunker Hill Monument or outside of it as we are waiting for them to open that I am doing something different that other people aren't doing. it isn't subtle. I'm dressed differently than everyone else. I'll have on workout clothes. A headband. Inside the Monument, I'll be moving at a steady pace, perhaps breathing hard, and usually sweating profusely. And yet, because people are so unthinking, s

Thursday 4/23/26 We're just going to keep talking about what these people are about and what they're up to. The twisted ways in which they are wired. How corrupt they are. Thieving, petty. Unbalanced. The real reasons why most things happen in publishing. The classism. The workings of the system of incestuous evil. Remember Eric Gibson? He's the arts editor at The Wall Street Journal who thought it'd be fun to chide me about how his paper had created a multi-year nightmare fo

Thursday 4/23/26 From a piece on Bob Clark's 1974 film, Deathdream, completed this morning. Bob Clark, the director who gave us unforgettable accounts of both sides of the Yuletide coin from mine to mint with Black Christmas and A Christmas Story, was pledged to range. The best artists are. If you can describe what someone does in a stock phrase or slap on a one-size-fits-all genre label, their work won’t last, and nor should it. Cast your mind to something like B

Thursday 4/23/26 Written this morning. Folk horror often immerses us like a long walk in the forest does the same. Our heads are cleared because of where we are. The choice—for it is also in some measure a choice—to be fragmented, scattered, distracted, isn’t the same easy option that it had been elsewhere. The noise has faded away. For these hours. We are left with our thoughts and ourselves. We can grow and know the self in any environment—in theory—but would we doubt that

Thursday 4/23/26 The "Johnny B. Goode" encore that closes the Grateful Dead's 1971 Halloween show at the Ohio Theatre will tear the flesh off of you, and you'll be glad it did and feel no pain. Dick's Picks Volume 2 is kind of like the Dead's version of the Who's Live at Leeds. You have this big show, which you can listen to as if it were an album itself, boiled down, in the case of Leeds, to six numbers; two from the beginning of the show, and then the final four performance

Wednesday 4/22/26 Here's the situation and how it really stands. I'm out of circulation, I've all but washed my hands. My social life's a dud, my name is really Mud. I'm up to here in lies. Guess I'm down to size. That's from the Music Machine's "Talk Talk," converted into prose form. Gripping words. I recommend The Ultimate Turn On set, Music Machine-wise. Down goes Frazier. Down down, you bring me down. Stone Roses. Slow down. Brrrrrmmmmp. Larry Williams. I'm downloading Pa

Wednesday 4/22/26 As I was saying about sports. Unfortunately, the Celtics did last night what they've been wont to do during the Tatum-Brown era, and that's make things harder on themselves by now having what we'll call that killer instinct, despite "instinct" being a term I'm loath to use with humans, given that we have free will (in theory, anyway). They let the 76ers into the series, and now it likely goes at least six games. You let a team in (or hang around) and anythin

Tuesday 4/21/26 On Sunday I was as close to drinking as I've been in the nearly ten years since I stopped. Had there been a pill in front of me that would have ended my life had I swallowed it, I would have taken it with little to no hesitation, and I think probably none. Drinking would be another way of giving up. Being done. Drinking equates to the same thing. I was up for something like forty hours. I sleep so little as it is. I didn't run stairs on Sunday--I got as far as

Monday 4/20/26 I'm not going to say too much here. The side-by-side comparison of the two textual examples speaks for itself. You will know this. I know this. Everyone in publishing would know this. What follows is the start of a story--something that's theoretically meant to draw the reader in--called "Plaster" from a December 2024 issue of The New Yorker , put forward by fiction editor Deborah Treisman, approved by editor in chief David Remnick, written by David Szalay. Pl

Monday 4/20/26 Lamenting what he perceived to be his failures as an artist in a letter that turned out to be one from the end of his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald maintained that his best work nonetheless possessed a sort of epic grandeur. I apply this appellation to the music the Grateful Dead made in 1972, especially the autumn of that year and the shows with a "Dark Star." As time is the thematic crux of Nick Drake's art, light is the thematic crux of the Grateful Dead's. Cont

Monday 4/20/26 Letter. Things are horrible here. I'm in a bad place. I'm not going to say too much right now because 1. I don't want to frighten you and 2. I don't want to open up and then perhaps see nothing in following. I just want to say what I just said. Right now, I'm looking at getting things in order. Getting some stuff to my sister. The place I'm in right now...I feel like it's the end. But again, I just want to say these things. It's a little different than me sayin

Sunday 4/19/26 The number of people who evaluate a player--and this is a surefire sign it's NFL draft time--by their highlights and nothing else--speaks volumes about our world. They are highlights. They mean little. The nature of a highlight is a cherry-picked point of favorablity. Sports are game in, game out. At-bat to at-bat. Shift to shift. Down to down. Possession to possession. Not highlight to highlight. We lose sight of the "game" nature of sport. It's not how well y

Sunday 4/19/26 From 1984-1986--that's three seasons for those scoring at home--Red Sox pitcher Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd--also called "The Can"--had 33 complete games. The Can, whom I wrote about for the Globe, was...okay. He was good in 1985, then thought he should have been an All-Star in 1986 and went ballistic when he wasn't named to the squad. He was by no means a great pitcher in these years when he was at his best (he did have something of a surprising comeback season in 1

Saturday 4/18/26 Dave Portnoy looks like toilet paper that didn't go down with the flush and is later discovered to still be there. He is also the morality version of this. Sedge is a great grass. If you grow in a marsh, you seem on the right side of things to me. No wonder Keats included some in "La Belle Dame sans Merci." When the sedge starts to wither, you know things are getting real. I like my dental floss old school and without promises on the package about how gentle

Thursday 4/16/26 The Clippers are done and the Warriors play on--for now. The Clippers had that big turnaround and then it all just comes to an end in two-and-a-half hours! The play-in "round"--are we counting this as a round?--makes for some good sports theater. I suppose I was rooting for the Warriors because of Curry and Kerr--I like to watch the former and I think it's good for the game and the country for the latter to have a platform--but I still feel like the Clippers

Thursday 4/16/26 Dear (), It is your friend Colin again in Boston where he is proud of you. Well, you did it. What you needed to do. And not everyone does that. Actually, many don’t. I hope you are giving yourself credit. One last little bit of advice from me. Or a thought. As you may perhaps know, I run many stairs. Let’s just say it—I am a mighty Zulu warrior when it comes to stairs (and a few other things). And yes, that is the official term. But even though I

Wednesday 4/15/26 From a letter. Seems relevant. ...I'm finally starting to proof these journal entries. As I go through each recent publishing one, I'm going to send them to you. My efforts on that score are redoubling. I space it out too much and I can't do that given what these people are and if I ever want to get out of this worse-than hell. I'm too kind, too disinclined to make war, or fight in a war, but I need to be the wolf who goes out killing every day and comes bac

Wednesday 4/15/26 Lorin Stein probably didn't rape anyone yesterday. New York Times Book Review editor Sadie Stein probably didn't countenance Lorin Stein raping anyone yesterday. (Though she definitely readied some AI-generated "writing" by the "right kind" of person for Sunday's paper along with Gregory Cowles.) Everything in life is about percentages, right? We watch a baseball game and we learn that one team has a 23% chance of winning that game on that day as the game s

Wednesday 4/15/26 Kids should be shown The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) in school. Adults should be shown A Canterbury Tale (1944) in life. The former is an invaluable lesson in historical perspective; the latter ought to be considered required viewing for the soul. I've long believed that one of the least understood challenges a person can face in this country is that of the solider returned from war. You go from those situations to perhaps being treated as if you're gar

Tuesday 4/14/26 Tonight's the final night of the of the Bruins' regular season. All of the playoff spots are spoken for, so there won't be any drama on that score over the last few days here. The Flyers won in a shootout last night, clinching the final berth. I had hoped the Capitals would have squeaked in because I'd rather see Ovechkin in the playoffs than Philly but that's no big deal. I also tend to root for the less likely or unlikely thing to happen when it isn't one of

Monday 4/13/26 Gordie Howe played in 1947. Ray Bourque played in 2001. Gordie Howe and Ray Bourque played against each other. Willie Mays won two MVPs, Hank Aaron won one. They are two of the half dozen best baseball players of all-time by any definition. It probably seems like they should have more. At most, Mays could have won three. The season in contention is 1962, when Maury Wills won. I also would have gone with Wills. Aaron ought to have had the one. His best year was