Travels and travails in the Great Outdoors
The Western for too long existed outside of context, depicting a black and white world, breeding revisionist history into legend. Leone's uncut epic challenges that, delivering us into a world baptized in blood. It is a world both good and bad, and--ultimately--ugly.
Afghanistan eats bombs. It eats rockets, too, and bullets, mortars, IEDs, RPGs, souls. Its hunger is immediate and insatiable, and while thrashing for more, it uncaringly kills men, women, children, foreigner, and local. Who taught this monster to crave flesh and gunpowder? We weren't the first--a history of conquest and cruelty map across the mountains and deserts--but we feed it, and in doing so only strengthen this beast.
Foolishness breeds foolishness. And that foolishness is well on display within retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s book, The Field of Fight. In this political submission to fear, Flynn attempts to scare Americans/Westerners (it says something that he can barely differentiate between the two, but he generally lumps groups together ) into believing that ISIS/Al... Continue Reading →
Jealousy for time spent, not spent, and misspent is at the core of Kevin Barry’s first novel, City of Bohane. Barry explores the labyrinthine twists and turns of a dangerous west Ireland peninsular town, lovingly exposing the reader to Bohane’s underbelly. He dredges the Bohane River’s taint, which makes itself known in the harsh brogue... Continue Reading →
The Big Wild 