Front Range Burner

Please have a look at my newly created pages on turn-of-the-century writers if you are interested in authors such as Stevenson, Wilde, and Doyle. Owen Wister will be discussed as well, and you are welcome to bring up others. I'm suddenly interested in fin de siecle writings because I can see many parallels between the late nineteenth century and now. Late Victorian writers were often labeled "decadent" because, I suppose, they questioned the strict morals of the time and called for more natural relations, sometimes veering into the hedonistic. Another influence was the growth of science which presented ethical questions, just as it does today. I will compare works of the late 1800s to 21st century writings and movies, such as Duncan Jones's Moon and Source Code .

It's a delight to wake up on a beautiful Saturday morning to muscular, engaged prose. That's why I've been reading the new Review section of the Saturday WSJ instead of heading straight to the gym. Review and its sister section Off Duty help me get my mental engines revved up and ready for a multidisciplined weekend. For instance, today's Off Duty section leads with a command to take three days off in Jackson Hole, Wyoming by reporter Benjamin Percy. Okay! The commands continue: "peel off your clothes and soak the travel grime off your skin" "drag on your wetsuit and board a bus that grumbles into Teton National Forest"  "throw down $10 for the round-trip shuttle that motors you across the water to the Cascade Canyons trailhead" "suck down a gin martini and chew your way through an elk steak" "grass hisses beneath you as you bump along, your teeth gritted into a smile" "eat up some asphalt". Double okay! I...

Reading a cover of Beth Slifer and her Vail interior design business in the Denver Post , I was thrown off by the line " comfortable, functional and timeless with a dollop of opulence." I can deal with the word dollop (but just barely) in recipes, but it's too precious and patronizing to press into use elsewhere. Word fads are addictive. I'm alarmed to see "dollop" cropping up as often as burnt orange colored vehicles on the highway. Last week, moneycontrol.com emblazoned " Emerging markets will see dollop of fund flows " on its home page. Puleeeze! An interview with the mystery author Dean James described him as " churning out sprightly feel good reads with a heavy dollop of humor and a twist of murder and mayhem." Even the New York Times has fallen for the dippy word. A book interview in today's issue says, "During this visit to Nana Selma, Rayne relives his troubled but nurturing boyhood, and also gets a dollop of histo...