Tag Archives: Jonathan Swift

The Sundae And The Mere Production Of Happiness

In his best-known satire of 1726, Jonathan Swift confects a historical account of the “civil commotions” which have claimed eleven thousand Lilliputian and Blefescusian lives and at the centre of which stands the deadly matter of the end, big or little, at which an egg is to be broken. The passage, which casts a withering gaze over English religious history from the time of Henry VIII forward, merits a generous citation:

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The Compulsion to Write (pt. 1)

Illustration by Anthony Russo

I was eight years old and urinating in the bathroom of my parents’ Central Avenue house when the precise words manifesting a desire to fill my life with writing first came into my conscious mind. Why this thought occurred to me at so late a date, I am unable to say. Continue reading The Compulsion to Write (pt. 1)