“Words like ‘watershed’ or ‘turning point’ are easy to deploy but hard to justify—except in the case of World War I. Like few other episodes—the fall of Rome, the Black Death, the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution—it really did leave a different world in its wake. The technology of mass destruction was perhaps the most obvious respect. Barbed wire, trench warfare, the machine gun, the tank, poison gas, artillery barrages, and aerial bombardment all meant that war would no longer evoke enthusiastic reactions like that of one characteristically brainless young aristocrat in the first weeks of the war: ‘It is all the best fun. I have never felt so well, or so happy, or enjoyed anything so much.’ Such upper-class twits were killed off even more rapidly than the plowboys and factory workers who followed them into the maw of the new industrial killing machines. War would no longer be noble sport; it was professionalized. And so, more subtly but no less fatefully, was government. The technology of mass persuasion (otherwise known as propaganda or indoctrination) was first introduced not by the totalitarian regimes of the interwar period but by the democracies during World War I. As John Buchan, the British Empire’s tireless propagandist-in-chief, put it: ‘So far as Britain is concerned, the war could not have been fought for one month without its newspapers.’ The same was true of Germany and France. The first total war imposed unprecedented burdens on the population and therefore required unprecedented lying and coercion on the part of governments to preempt or suppress dissent. They rose to this challenge brilliantly, cajoling newspaper owners, cultivating friendly journalists, subsidizing ‘patriotic’ writers, speakers, and film-makers, prohibiting or sabotaging antiwar meetings and publications, and harassing or, when necessary, imprisoning critics. Government was no longer largely a hobby for the more earnest, non-fox-hunting members of the aristocracy. It became public administration, one of the social sciences.” – George Scialabba, “To End All Wars” (emphasis in original)
Some of the stories and poems may be inappropriate for persons under 16
- A Dog by the Ears
- Abrumpo
- After the Dreaming
- All the Sobbing Cops
- apple strudel
- As I Command
- At Kahun, for the Health of the Mother and the Child
- Breaking Leather on the Dog
- burning man
- Candlelight and Flowers
- Casserole Man
- Christmas Pictures
- Dead Bob
- Dehiscence
- Descartes’ Dreams – Intro
- Desserts for the Reading of the KJV
- Dolomite
- Dropping back to Punt
- Eighth Dream – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
- eleanor in uncertain way, pulling
- Entomology
- Exit Interview
- Extinguisher (with Unpacking the Object)
- Fifteen Small Apocalypses
- Fifteenth Dream – The, uh, target
- Final Edit
- First Bundle of Documents (from The Olive Drab Footlocker)
- First Dream – Puttin’ on the Ritz
- FOMO on BLM
- Fourteenth Dream – By the Waters of Babylon
- Fourth Dream – Motherless Child
- Franny & Toby
- Gnats
- Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Pickles and Fries
- Guys Come in Three Sizes
- High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Money in a Stoner’s New Mexico
- Howl
- Introduction
- Karen and the Dropout
- Kimberly!
- King of the Wire Rings
- latrodectus, loxosceles, lycosa tarentula
- Lawn
- Legal Advice
- Liberation
- Linear Perspective
- Lost Things and Missing Persons
- mama when she’s really pretty
- Metronome
- My Friend!
- Ninth Dream – Descartes’ Dreams
- Poems 2001-2010
- Rag Doll
- Road Rave
- Sandhills
- Saved
- Shelving
- Shod
- Sixteenth Dream – Scoring Six Hits
- Tahoe
- Taking Calls
- Tale of the Tribe
- Tenth Dream – The Vicissitudes of the Seasons
- The Comedian
- The Congenital Fiance
- the german for it, the french
- The Gordon Lish Notes
- The Hole of Sharon
- The Italian Story
- The Lock
- The Take-Out
- the talking french cat
- The Tellings
- The Tiny Toy Train
- The Usual Story
- The Well-Molded Military Brick
- The Year Our Children Left
- Third Dream – A Thousand Times No
- Three Very Short Fictions
- Tossing Baby to the Tiger
- Twelfth Dream – Fantod
- Vitrine
- Wednesday
- What Coy Said
- Who, what, etc.
- Yellowjacket
- Yttat
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