Hal Johnson's Blog

Crime fiction at it's [sic] finest

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Artist unknown; perh. unknowable

Been some sad times in the Johnson household, so let the next few garlands express our personal contempt for death.

My children need comic books!

The object of life is to make sure you die a weird death. To make sure that however it finds you, it will find you under very weird circumstances. To live that kind of life.
•Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973).

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMy son Augustus, in the street, one day,Was feeling quite exceptiona...

Try my dirty-joke novel, Sudden Glory

Hal Johnson Books is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Don Heck!

Consider supporting me by buying a book

If fleas were to develop a rite, then it would refer to the dog.
•Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough (1931).

All things have significance for all: if birds had wisdom, they would have constructed an art for knowing the future based on observing humans, as we do by observing them.
•Synesius, On Dreams (404).

I realised that everything is, in reality, gifted with the capacity to communicate, either through the senses or by means of the intellect; more...

I write, for a living, books

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Sheldon Moldoff!

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I draw
The bowstring of Cupid’s bow,
Too powerful for anything but love to pull.
•Frederick Seidel, “Milan” (1998).

The Queen of Love went out to walk
And saw an archer shoot a hawk;
And when she saw the poor hawk die,
The Queen of Love was heard to sigh.
•Songs for the Nursery Collected From the Works of the Most Renowned Poets and Adapted to Favourite National Melodies (c. 1835).

For he was neuere gode werryour,
That cowed not loue a-ryght;
For loue hath made many a...

I continue to beg your indulgence while I write and post poetry. Profligate poetry fans who are tolerant of prose always have the option of buying a book?

Or "buy me a coffee" (so called)

Ballad of a Summer LoveText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedShe’d summer, back in ’94, Beside the Knights of Labor’sOld clubhouse on the facing shore— So we were almost neighbors,And every night I’d swim the lake Like Hero’s own Leander.I’d brave the aquarattlesnake, The...

My books won't read themselves!

Hal Johnson Books is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Byrne & Wiacek!

The penultimate installment of the only real and valid list of the 200 best songs of the 1960s! The rule: Only one entry per band. Anything can happen! Previous installments at the end.

I write books! Check 'em out!

20. King of the Road by Roger Miller (1965)

Absolutely the best song to play on your Walkman (or whatever) as you travel by bus. I mean, if you travel by boxcar, more power to you; but it also works on a bus.

This is, on the one hand, just another hobo song, of the kind Woody Guthrie mi...

None dare stop you from buying a book!

On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider.
•Bataille, Documents #7 (1929).

Indeed, what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders?
•Browne, Religio Medici (1643).

Nietzsche might well be a little lost in the web of his text, lost much as a spider who finds he is unequal to the web he has spun.
•Derrida, Spurs (1978).

The skill of th...