You know, the part you throw in the trash with the classifieds and the circulars, whenever you buy a newspaper, if ever you buy a newspaper ever again before we either collapse into a black hole or run out of oil? Yeah, that section is now a big-whoop webbie thing for the technogeek crowd. Funny, but this sounds precisely the same as I’d expect it to sound if it was printed in the Daily Wipe.

Seriously, maybe this is wrong because of the whole third-wife-younger-woman thing, but I don’t care: I think you’re awesome. I can’t remember a cooler, prettier, or more badass first lady. I mean, you slept with Jagger. And Clapton. You read Yeats. You play the guitar. Nude pictures of you sell for a bazillion Euros (which is like double bazillion dollars). You recorded a Serge Gainsbourg tribute song that was actually well received. You speak three languages.The outfit you wore to meet the Queen this week? The one with the pillbox hat? The one that’s making everyone compare you to Jackie O? Brilliant. I also like your hair, makeup and skin. Keep on keepin on, Madame Sarkozy. I’m psyched for your new life. I’m especially excited to see what you’ll wear.

Except it costs nothing to ‘print’ that. I’m not saying anything here, except that precisely nothing has changed in 30 years of reading the papers. Except maybe for talking about S-E-X, but that’s the Cosmo effect. I bet they have good deals on cosmetics and knick-knacks available to you on your Bluetooth phone somewhere, ladies. Maybe some recipes, too.

And yeah, I still read the sports first, followed by business — I am a man, and I know what’s important. Metro shit, I ditched that long ago, since it was an endless procession of carjackings, arson, and White House Blue Ribbon kindergartens — Gus from The Wire. The front section is Pullet Surprise attempts by local yokels, and random crap grabbed from the wires. Come to think it, I haven’t bought a paper in many full moons.

The Rescue of John Steinbeck - The New York Review of Books

He’s moralizing, he’s didactic, he’s searching for big answers to big questions. He’s generous and vulnerable and touchy. And he’s more and more dismayed by what he sees around him: “I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security—out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism.” You could say that by the end he had evolved into a kind of minor and irrelevant prophet, both disillusioned and irredeemably optimistic.

Yeah, well, I’m guessing that most of us go out that way, no? I’m no Steinbeck, not by a far stretch, and damn, that’s pretty much precisely the way I feel about myself.

That’s a pretty dang good look at the life of John Steinbeck, a man whose books still adorn my shelves (right now in cardboard boxes in the garage, but still, on shelves.) Much is explained by the Explainer, which these types all seem to be. Not that I don’t enjoy it, somewhat, but I also weary of the post-humous psychoanalytics. The worst part, though, is learning of the conjecture that the conversations in Travels With Charlie is wholly made up. Ach, I sure hope not.