D. A. Hosek

Just another writer

  • Beautiful Sentences: J. Robert Lennon

    The memories this act stirred up were mostly memories of other visits to this cemetery, when her feelings had been more profound. (This is what happens, she supposes, to dramatic events: they create feelings that create other feelings, memories that give way to memories of having them. The older you get, the more life seems…

  • Salinger Revisited: Teddy

    The most explicitly Buddhist of Salinger’s stories, the titular character here is a preternaturally wise child who is apparently some sort of Buddhist panjandrum who fell from grace and as a means of atonement was reincarnated into the body of an American (had he engaged in some somewhat less egregious behavior, his reincarnation would have been…

  • Dewey Decimal Project: 320.509 ARE Hannah Arendt

    Looking over the shelves gave me ajada with all the conservative nonsense books. Seeing the combination of Hannah Arendt and Julia Kristeva on the spine of this book left me feeling that there might be some hope after all for the 300s. This is a biography of sorts, but one really focusing more on Arendt’s life…

  • Beautiful Sentences: Denis Johnson

    No wonder he didn’t hear or speak, no wonder he didn’t have anything to do with words. Everything along those lines was used up Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son.

  • Salinger Revisited: De Daumier Smith’s Blue Period

    This is, to me, one of those stories that feels like a remnant of Salinger’s pre-New Yorker writing. Perhaps this is why it was declined by The New Yorker and instead appeared in Information World Review instead (it was, in fact, the last Salinger story that appeared outside the pages of The New Yorker). There continue to be…

  • Dewey Decimal Project: 317.3 PET Unlocking the Census with GIS

    Sometimes in the Dewey Decimal project I end up with bad choices. In this instance, the 310s are statistics. There were a couple of almanacs and this book. Then, for added bonus, I lost the book while I was reading it. I ended up buying a used copy in excellent condition to finish reading it.…

  • Beautiful Sentences: J. Robert Lennon

    Stories exist to make sense of life. J. Robert Lennon, Familiar.

  • Dewey Decimal Project: 306.235 FLA Girl Land

    As the father of a young daughter and a member of a family which went 59 years without a female birth before my daughter’s birth, girls are a bit of a mystery to me. No sisters, no nieces, and only a single female cousin who was over a decade older than me so I knew…

  • Beautiful Sentences: Denis Johnson

    Looking at her I thought of going out in the fields with my wife back when we were so in love we didn’t know what it was. Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son.