Arthur Graham’s Reviews > The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time > Status Update
Arthur Graham
is 61% done
That power of conviction is a hard thing for any writer to sustain, and especially so once he becomes conscious of it. Fitzgerald fell apart when the world no longer danced to his music; Faulkner's conviction faltered when he had to confront Twentieth Century Negroes instead of the black symbols in his books; and when Dos Passos tried to change his convictions he lost all his power.
— Jul 18, 2026 10:26AM
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Arthur’s Previous Updates
Arthur Graham
is 60% done
Well, this is the longest letter I've written since I was in the Air Force and was sending love letters to a girl in Tallahassee. I don't expect you to be altogether happy with this one, but then the girl wasn't always happy with hers, either, and we both survived.
— Jul 17, 2026 04:43AM
Arthur Graham
is 59% done
When the cold Andean dusk comes down on Cuzco, the waiters hurry to shut the Venetian blinds in the lounge of the big hotel in the middle of town. They do it because the Indians come up on the stone porch and stare at the people inside. It tends to make tourists uncomfortable, so the blinds are pulled. The tall, oak-paneled room immediately seems more cheerful.
— Jul 14, 2026 06:28PM
Arthur Graham
is 56% done
I was out there on the crowded concrete floor of the Miami Beach Convention Center in August of 1972 when that howling mob of Republican delegates confirmed Richard Nixon's lust for another term in the White House with their constant, thunderous chant of "FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!"
— Jul 12, 2026 01:25PM
Arthur Graham
is 55% done
For as long as he lives, Richard Nixon will be on the federal dole forever at $400,000 a year -- $60,000 pension, $96,000 to cover his personal staff salaries, $40,000 for travel, $21,000 to cover his telephone bills and $100,000 for "miscellaneous."
— Jul 07, 2026 07:13PM
Arthur Graham
is 54% done
Nixon's entire political career -- and in fact his whole life -- is a gloomy monument to the notion that not even pure schizophrenia or malignant psychosis can prevent a determined loser from rising to the top of the heap in this strange society we have built for ourselves in the name of "democracy" and "free enterprise."
— Jul 07, 2026 05:35AM
Arthur Graham
is 53% done
Despite all its menacing implications, the desperate plight of the national economy was not a story that called up the same kind of journalistic adrenaline that Washington and most of the country had been living on for so long that the prospect of giving it up caused a serious panic in the ranks of all the Watergate junkies who never even knew they were hooked until the cold turkey swooped into their closets.
— Jul 03, 2026 11:30AM
Arthur Graham
is 52% done
The main reaction to Richard Nixon's passing -- especially among journalists who had been on the Deathwatch for two years -- was a wild and wordless orgasm of long-awaited relief that tailed off almost instantly to a dull, post-coital sort of depression that still endures.
— Jul 03, 2026 11:24AM
Arthur Graham
is 48% done
[Nixon] will be grouped, along with presidents like Grant and Harding, as a corrupt and incompetent mockery of the American Dream he praised so long and loud in all his speeches. . . not just as a "crook," but so crooked that he required the help of a personal valet to screw his pants on every morning.
— Jun 26, 2026 03:45PM
Arthur Graham
is 47% done
"I think I'll give up covering Nixon for a while -- at least until I can whip this drinking problem."
"Maybe what you should do is get into a different line of work, or have yourself committed."
"No." I said. "I think I'll get a job teaching journalism."
— Jun 24, 2026 06:07PM
"Maybe what you should do is get into a different line of work, or have yourself committed."
"No." I said. "I think I'll get a job teaching journalism."
Arthur Graham
is 46% done
It is far better to know the Secret Service is keeping an eye on you than to suspect it all the time without ever being sure.
— Jun 09, 2026 03:50PM
It is not just a writer's crisis, but they are the most obvious victims because the function of art is supposedly to bring order out of chaos, a tall order even when the chaos is static, and a superhuman task in a time when chaos is multiplying.