Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, January 20, 2018, 11:10 a.m. Laurens Academy is up on a hill on Highway 49, out in the country a ways, between the highway’s intersections with Interstates 385 and 26. The basketball games began at 4 p.m. on Friday, with middle-school girls and boys, and varsity girls and boys, taking on …
Tag: Monte Dutton
The Resistance of the Just Soul
Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, January 15, 2018, 12:15 p.m. Fritz Kolbe is just a man. He has no yearning to kill and never does so in Andreas Kollender’s The Honest Spy, expertly translated into English by Steve Anderson. Perhaps because the novel begins in South Africa, where he is assigned a diplomatic post by the …
Sometimes You Can’t Win Either
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, January 13, 2018, 11:07 a.m. Newberry, a rival of historic significance, won both the high school basketball games played at Clinton High School on Friday night, and I suppose the Bulldogs’ 71-68 victory in the boys’ game was a bit historic in that it ended a 12-game streak of Red Devil …
The Fog of Doom Descends
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, January 12, 2018, 10:37 a.m. I have started to confront the possibility that the world has passed me by. I am losing touch. When I write about high-school sports, it makes perfectly good sense that I don’t understand the kids. Their music. Their clothes. Their tastes. Hell, I remember when the …
At the Risk of Being Taken the Wrong Way …
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, January 5, 2018, 8:49 a.m. At some point, this feeding frenzy has to run its course. As with all feeding frenzies, some good has been achieved. Tides of frenzy sweep along with them some rampaging tyranny. To this very day, I am kind to women who wait on me at restaurants …
Getting High on Jaymo and J.P.
Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, December 24, 2017, 11:17 a.m. I’ve never been anywhere near the same distant universe as J.P. Dooley’s Getting High: The Jaymo Chronicles I, and I haven’t really read another novel like it. Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Maybe, though it wasn’t a novel. I’ve written about the dangerous release …
Love Among the Ruins
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, December 20, 2017, 3:30 p.m. One characteristic of most ivory towers is that they are imaginary. Last night, I was on the top floor of an ornate Greenville building, nibbling away at finger foods and hobnobbing with former football players and coaches who served at the foot of the inimitable Cally …
Some Games Are Monsters; Some Are Dogs
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, December 16, 2017, 11:28 a.m. A writer has to write, and, sometimes, be trite. When he accepts an assignment, it must be completed, even if the circumstances aren’t the best. I had a rather sheepish project to complete on Friday night. Ware Shoals, a Class A school, hadn’t much of a …
Dreeeeeam, Dream, Dream, Dreeeam …
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, December 9, 2017, 9:20 a.m. It’s been a week of boring days and exciting nights. I’ve spent most of my waking time proofing an audio version of my year-old novel, Cowboys Come Home, and there hasn’t been much sleeping time because my mind has been occupied with the financial difficulties that …
Turning Phrases with a Deft Touch
Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, November 27, 2017, 6:32 p.m. Raymond Chandler was an extraordinary novelist and screenwriter. I can only imagine how great a sports columnist he would have been. This man could turn a phrase. They cascade through his prose like waterfalls. “… she had a blue mink that almost made the Rolls-Royce look …
Nightrider's Lament 