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Guns, dogs and the language of totality

Language breaks out. Language, a shouted word, or a silent, metaphoric act, will insist itself into notice like the thyme that pushes up through the layered shale of the earth. In early spring, as the ice beneath the frost line on the hill across from our house begins to melt, the hillside seems for days to sweat. Then, finally, it pours. Water rushes down and the gray-blue stone runs with darkness. That’s how language arrives.

Don’t Tread On Me

Four miles from our house, on what is now called Pleasant Valley Road, near the start of the last century,…

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was a longtime friend of Harper’s Magazine, passed away on February 23, 2006. He was the author of twenty-seven books, including The Night Inspector (Harmony) and A Memory of War (Norton).

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