The worst thing about the cold in Florida is that, knowing what's going on up north, we can't complain about it.
Even if they're not always celebrated, there are 12 days of Christmas - more if the special double Christmas issue of The Spectator arrives late to Bob's News.
In high school the two works that opened my eyes to the power of literature were Our Town and Spoon River Anthology. And last night they were both answers on Jeopardy!
I hate self-promotion, but it's that time of year when people are looking for gift ideas and I thought: Perhaps I can sell a couple copies. So yesterday morning I went on Facebook and then Twitter and wrote: "An immodest proposal: End the woes of '17 with The Joys of Travel." And below this I posted a large photograph of my book cover, with the bright red-and-yellow train gliding along its tracks. About an hour later Hania called to tell me about the Amtrak crash.
What’s to be done with the present tense and its unending popularity among travel writers and editors? In 2001, in his introduction to The Best American Travel Writing, Paul Theroux was already denouncing it, calling it “precious, self-regarding, a distraction.” It had been years since Theroux had taught, so he was unaware that it is also anathema to writing teachers, who spend a good deal of their time changing verbs from past to present in stories by students who forget that they started out in present and inevitably move to the more natural, and accurate, past tense (often before subconsciously reverting to present again). Life would be so much easier for everyone – students, teachers, readers – if travel stories were told in retrospect. Travel writers, we know you survived your journey, otherwise we wouldn’t have your words about it, so don’t pretend you’re still out there. And travel editors, free your writers – and readers – from the present. Unlike the past, it has never been called ‘a foreign country.’