brendan halpin

I had never seen any of the previous seasons before watching season one, so instead of measuring season 4 against season 1, I’m going to do the opposite.

Apart from a brief period, I’ve been broke, to a greater or lesser degree, for most of my life. (I’m making a distinction between broke and poor here, which I’ll explain below.) It’s embarrassing to be broke. To get your card declined at the store. To admit to people you know that you can’t really afford to do or buy something. To take loans and handouts from friends and family when you’re having a hard time.

All this stuff feels shameful. But it shouldn’t, for two reasons.

I’m sure you can absorb this from other disciplines, but here’s an important lesson I got from studying literature, in particular poetry: the part that doesn’t make sense is what makes it make sense.

Now, for those who don’t know me, I’ve been an English/Writing teacher in some form or another for most of the last 30 years. Just gotta establish those bona fides because I know teachers won’t listen to anyone who’s not a teacher. (Not that this is necessarily a bad thing! I went to enough “professional development” meetings led by consultants who had never set foot in a classroom to be extremely skeptical of non-teacher takes on teaching.)

Okay, let’s start with a quiz. Which one of these is an error?

I’ve got a cold, which means isolation and streaming stuff on Shudder. I’m a big fan of Dario Argento, so I decided to catch the new documentary about him.

We all know how much corporate control of the internet sucks. And how much corporate control of art sucks. Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to support DIY artists.

I still love paper books, but I also love ebooks. I love a trip to the library to browse and check out books, but also if I finish a book at 9 at night, it’s cool to be able to borrow the next one from my couch. And, of course, having an e-reader opens up a whole new world of reading. A lot of books (such as my 2002-2012 output) are pretty much only available to read as ebooks. And a lot of people (again, like me—pay what you want!) are putting out new work in electronic form because ebooks allow you to put your work out in the world with far less expense and trouble than traditional publishing. Yes, of course there’s a lot of crap out there, but that’s true of paper books as well.

But a lot of people tell me they don’t want to get locked into getting books from Bezos, especially since ebooks you buy from Amazon are essentially licensed rather than owned. (Remember when they sucked all the copies of 1984 out of people’s Kindles? A little on-the-nose, if you ask me, but it actually happened.)

Fortunately, you can get an ereader that’s not locked in to any particular bookseller, which essentially means buying an android tablet with an e-ink screen.

I’m really proud of this mystery I wrote, and I’d love for more people to read it. So, below, please find the first chapter for your consideration! If you like it, you can get the rest of the book (pay what you want!) here.

So the liberal arts are under attack from people who think the sole purpose of higher education is vocational training and from fascists. I’d like to talk about the second group because they’re more sinister, but also because if you’re a person of good will in the first group, you should be really clear on who you’re in bed with.

Fascists, and American Christofascists in particular, hate the liberal arts not because they’re not practical or because of tenure or antisemitism or even left-wing indoctrination. They hate the liberal arts because they don’t want people to think for themselves; they want them to do what they’re told.

Maps! Secret rooms! Forbidden knowledge! Libraries! This book checked a lot of boxes for me, and it’s definitely a fun, engaging read. Most of the big reveals were telegraphed pretty early on, so I can’t say anything that happened was terribly surprising, but still, I enjoyed the ride.

But of course I have some quibbles. Read on only if you’ve read the book—there are major spoilers ahead.