Letter to a Young Critic: William Giraldi Defends True Criticism – The Daily Beast

Always good to hear… More important, a blistering review—if it is written as a candid assertion of your principles—will strengthen existing friendships and earn you new friends whose worth surpasses those who have revealed themselves as your foes. When you are truthful, and especially when the need has arisen for you to be viciously truthful,…

PENGUIN ACTS OUT – Part The Fourth

Penguin has got himself into trouble this time! He had a weak point — this Fortunato — although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared.  He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at…

PENGUIN ACTS OUT – Part the Third

  One of the the wildest stories related to a Yellow Diamond — a famous gem in the native annals of India. … Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adored, and growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and…