The Week in Letters

Ross Douthat writes for the New York Times a response to last week's Sunday Book Review feature by Katie Roiphe, in which she laments the loss of the literary lions of yesteryear—"the Roths and Updikes, Mailers and Bellows," per Douthat—and the virility and libido that defined their letters. Douthat writes down Roiphe's main complaint about their successors, today's authors, which is that they are possessed by a "puritanical" streak. Douthat make a compelling case for the notion that it is not an outward pressure, an imposition of an external or religious nature, so much as it as a hard-won "exhaustion of the transgressive impulse." I think that's an elegant phrasing and perhaps captures something about an accelerated sexual coming of age. But his argument comes off the rails with his illustrations. So when he says that Lady Gaga . . .

. . . um, that . . .

oh hell. I can't think straight. Y'all know what day it is here at G.p headquarters. It is time to THROW THEM HORNS UP. Just as soon as I get a couple calls back from Los Angeles I am on my way to the first of several six-packs of Shiner Bock. Here is the day's mandatory reading. I am also enjoying this and this right now. And for your further consideration.

Some of those links courtesy of the cast of villains I call my friends back home. We're all pretty much in agreement: The more yards Colt has running and the higher the scores go, the better our chances will be. Ingram? That's some kind of Scientology thing, right?

TEXAS!

FIGHT!