Thirteen years ago Robert Ardrey published his African Genesis, popularizing Raymond Dart’s old theory that man evolved from a “killer ape” whose murderous instincts remain deeply ingrained in us, despite a veneer of civility. This angry beast is redrawn from the dust jacket of African
I have come to live in New Burlington’s last farm house, surrounded by white brick and clean silence. I have come here to understand its death, my life. Nothing is revealed. I consider Ross McDonald and Agatha Christie, all mystery in the telling, and resolution
September 30, 1973 The Coming of Machinery – I One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure. — Baudelaire It is said that the farmer’s
They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. – Thoreau, Walden In the summer, the cornfields surround New Burlington with a startling density. In early August of a wet year, the stalks climb until the roads into the village disappear. Farm
July 10, 1973 It is an ordinary chair, of good mahogany and quiet cloth. In front of the rockers, the figured carpet is worn, an acquiescence to Mrs. Louie Wills’ passage through the seasons. The chair is the center of her existence, as if the
