On a Pale Microphone

The hombres get right with Satan.

After taking a year to steel themselves for the effort, the boys are back in town to read a man’s scathing last-ditch defense against the menace of rock music. What does this have to do with nature? Shut up shut up shut up.

Joel and Keith contemplate Anthony’s not-super-comprehensive thoughts on war and not-super-informed sense of what India is like. Also: the specter of feminism. Also also: Kurt Vonnegut and Iain M. Banks, both of whom could actually write.

CONTENT WARNING: towards the end, we talk a bit about suicide. Joel and Keith ponder fate, and Piers Anthony’s notions of it. As they were fated to?

TIME is the FIRE in which we BURN and you’d think that would provide for some dramatic stakes and maybe some grounds to talk about mortality and such. But Piers Anthony wouldn’t agree, much to Joel and Keith’s dismay. The boys get so mad they forget to even bring up Sning; luckily, that leaves plenty … Continue reading 2: Bearing an Hourglass →

A pair of fools dig into Piers Anthony’s 1983 novel about a guy who becomes the Grim Reaper in search of wisdom, or at least a paragraph where Anthony doesn’t talk about a woman’s appearance. Also: some discussion of why two notionally normal, sane men would engage with these books. And: a dog barks.