In The Immemorial Style Of Young Men

It Struck Me That The Chief Obstacle To Marital Contentment Was This Perpetual Gulf Between The Well-founded, Commendable Pessimism Of Women And The Sheer Dumb Animal Optimism Of Men, The Latter A Force More Than Any Other Responsible For The Lamentable State Of The World.

A Delicate, Inexorable Lattice Of Inferences Began To Assemble Themselves, Like A Crystal, In The Old Man's Mind, Shivering, Catching The Light In Glints And Surmises.

I Took Comfort, As A Kid, In Knowing That Things Had Always Been As Awful And As Wonderful As They Were Now, That The World Was Always On The Edge Of Total Destruction.

It Took Marvel Comics Years To Begin To Put Together Any Worthwhile Superheroines. The First Crop Was, To A Gal, Embarrassingly Disappointing. They Had All The Measly Powers That Fifties And Sixties Male Chauvinism Could Contrive To Bestow On A Superwoman.

I Knew That I Shouldn’t Have, But I Did It All The Same; And There You Have My Epitaph, Or One Of Them, Because My Grave Is Going To Require A Monument Inscribed On All Four Sides With Rueful Mottoes, In Small Characters, Set Close Together.