Author: Bob Benz

Just finished Annie Proulx’s latest novel, set in the Texas Panhandle. As always, she does an incredible job of painting characters. Her sense of the grotesque rivals Flannery O’Connor, and her ability to weave words into living people never fails to amaze me. “He had a sharp Aztec nose, fluffy black hair and black eyes like those in a taxidermist’s drawer.” Love that image. She seldom reverts to cliche in her similies and metaphors. She also does a great job of portraying Panhandle Texans, warts and all, without turning them into caricatures. My one disappointment was the end of “That Old Ace in the Hole.” It felt sort of anticlimactic, perhaps too “tidy.” I actually dreamed a different ending last night. Then, in a dream within a dream, I awoke and realized the “new” novel ending I’d just dreamed was the real finish, and that the disappointing ending was the “Hollywood” ending used for the movie version. Guess I’ve been watching too many bleak anti-Hollywood films on IFC and Sundance.

Regardless, I highly recommend the book, and all of her works. Great stuff. She’s definitely my favorite contemporary writer.

Thanks to Tivo, I’ve been watching all those Christmas specials that used to hypnotize me as a child. In fact, I watched Charlie Brown bungle the big Christmas tree purchase multiple times, at the urging of Anita’s 4-year-old daughter, Emma. The Grinch, Frosty, Snow Miser/Heat Miser … it brought back a flood of Christmas memories. It’s amazing how much these images and sounds are intertwined with my recollections of Christmas past. I remember sitting up late, watching Christmas specials on our little black and white TV, waiting for my postman father to return home late from delivering holiday mail. Most vividly, I remember that Norelco commercial, with Santa riding an electric shaver across the snow.

I guess that says something about the commercialization of Christmas. I was also amazed at how this was a recurring theme in many of the specials. Charlie Brown already was hitting commercialism head-on in 1965. The Grinch made his pitch in 1966. I wonder what they

Way back in the 20th century, when I was just beginning to replace my records with CDs and the constant ringing of mobile phones was still a twinkle in some demented elf’s eye, Lara Edge and I pondered Christmas.

We