Gerald Howard
@ghoward1950.bsky.social
Retired book editor, terminal bookworm, first-time author of THE INSIDER: MALCOLM COWLEY AND THE TRIUMPH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. I like movies too.
In World War II my father was in the "European Theater" and the "Pacific Theater." That word has not been used in public discourse in many many decades. A sickening sign of the militarization of American life.
Homan says agents have been “in theater a long time”. They see this as combat, as war.
Q: Can you be specific about how many ICE and CBP agents are currently operating in the state?
HOMAN: 3,000. There's been some rotations. They've been in theater a long time. Day after day, can't eat in restaurants, people spin on you, blowing whistles at you. But my main focus now is draw down
HOMAN: 3,000. There's been some rotations. They've been in theater a long time. Day after day, can't eat in restaurants, people spin on you, blowing whistles at you. But my main focus now is draw down
January 29, 2026 at 3:02 PM
In World War II my father was in the "European Theater" and the "Pacific Theater." That word has not been used in public discourse in many many decades. A sickening sign of the militarization of American life.
To paraphrase Henry II, "Will no one rid us of this troublesome douchebag?" I mean of course Ross Douthat and his -- give me a break! -- "Interesting Times" podcast.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/o...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/o...
Opinion | A Plan to Restore Trust in Science From a ‘Fringe Epidemiologist’
www.nytimes.com
January 29, 2026 at 2:55 PM
To paraphrase Henry II, "Will no one rid us of this troublesome douchebag?" I mean of course Ross Douthat and his -- give me a break! -- "Interesting Times" podcast.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/o...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/o...
I wouldn't follow Chuck Schumer into a snowball fight.
SCHUMER says Democrats are “united” behind three DHS reforms
1/ End roving patrols; tighten the rules on warrants and require ICE to coordinate with local authorities.
2/ Enforce accountability; a uniform code of conduct.
3/ Require masks off, body cameras on, agents carry ID.
1/ End roving patrols; tighten the rules on warrants and require ICE to coordinate with local authorities.
2/ Enforce accountability; a uniform code of conduct.
3/ Require masks off, body cameras on, agents carry ID.
January 29, 2026 at 1:45 AM
I wouldn't follow Chuck Schumer into a snowball fight.
Depressing day on the Jersey Transit train into NYC.One poster proclaimed that "Getting older doesn't always mean being wiser" -- warning that one-third of people over 65 misues their opiod prescriptions. Thanks, Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey, from a grateful geezer.
January 29, 2026 at 1:32 AM
Depressing day on the Jersey Transit train into NYC.One poster proclaimed that "Getting older doesn't always mean being wiser" -- warning that one-third of people over 65 misues their opiod prescriptions. Thanks, Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey, from a grateful geezer.
David Rieff, the Little Boy Lost of the intellectual set, is disappointed in liberalism and mad at his mother's biographer Benjamin Moser for not portraying Susan Sontag in a relentlessly positive light. He also poses as a geopolitical thinker, based on?
www.theideasletter.org/essay/woke-o...
www.theideasletter.org/essay/woke-o...
Woke Obsessions - The Ideas Letter
Klion traces the intellectual and moral trajectory of David Rieff, from a childhood spent in the forbidding shadow of his mother, Susan Sontag, to a successful journalistic career of his…
www.theideasletter.org
January 29, 2026 at 1:22 AM
David Rieff, the Little Boy Lost of the intellectual set, is disappointed in liberalism and mad at his mother's biographer Benjamin Moser for not portraying Susan Sontag in a relentlessly positive light. He also poses as a geopolitical thinker, based on?
www.theideasletter.org/essay/woke-o...
www.theideasletter.org/essay/woke-o...
Meanwhile, to file under "Death of the Humanities," Jersey Transit ads for both Stevens Tech and Rutgers trumpeted their superior "ROI" (Return on Investment) and corporate connections. God forbid you might learn something that doesn't have an immediate financial payoff.
January 29, 2026 at 12:36 AM
Meanwhile, to file under "Death of the Humanities," Jersey Transit ads for both Stevens Tech and Rutgers trumpeted their superior "ROI" (Return on Investment) and corporate connections. God forbid you might learn something that doesn't have an immediate financial payoff.
Stupidity coming out of her eyes . . . well, you finish it.
January 28, 2026 at 1:05 AM
Stupidity coming out of her eyes . . . well, you finish it.
Wow. You are either going to have a really good time there or a really bad time, no in-between.
ace of clubs lounge, route 90, lake charles, louisiana, 1979
January 27, 2026 at 9:52 PM
Wow. You are either going to have a really good time there or a really bad time, no in-between.
As an Irish American, I remember that not a single one of my ancestors owned slaves. They may have had other deficits, but participation in human bondage was not one of them. And btw my great-grandfather fought for the Union in the Civil War.
I do not appreciate that I’m paying taxes to fund government comms that are just more hyper-online Nazi bullshit
January 27, 2026 at 9:09 PM
As an Irish American, I remember that not a single one of my ancestors owned slaves. They may have had other deficits, but participation in human bondage was not one of them. And btw my great-grandfather fought for the Union in the Civil War.
More like MELANCHOLIA, I think.
“Move over ‘Avatar’ sequels. Here’s another movie that wasn’t necessary!”
Jon Stewart Brutally Mocks ‘Unnecessary’ Melania Movie
“Move over ‘Avatar’ sequels,” the late-night host said.
trib.al
January 27, 2026 at 6:48 PM
More like MELANCHOLIA, I think.
Hometown of Malcolm Cowley, Kenneth Burke, John Edgar Wideman.
January 27, 2026 at 1:17 AM
Hometown of Malcolm Cowley, Kenneth Burke, John Edgar Wideman.
January 27, 2026 at 12:51 AM
Someone pretending to be me is shilling some clearly AI-based editorial consulting scam. They use the e-mail address literary.gerry@gmail.com, and there are follow-ups from someone calling himself Marcus Thorne. For the record I am not freelance editing anything for anybody. Beware.
Gerald Howard
Gerald Howard
January 27, 2026 at 12:44 AM
Someone pretending to be me is shilling some clearly AI-based editorial consulting scam. They use the e-mail address literary.gerry@gmail.com, and there are follow-ups from someone calling himself Marcus Thorne. For the record I am not freelance editing anything for anybody. Beware.
Gerald Howard
Gerald Howard
Wow, we are at peak douchbag time. "The Spanish conquistador in me . . . " You tool. Or as Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon. What a nincompoop."
January 26, 2026 at 3:33 PM
Wow, we are at peak douchbag time. "The Spanish conquistador in me . . . " You tool. Or as Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon. What a nincompoop."
It is past time to start calling Trump what he is, something we have been lucky for 250 years not to have, a tyrant. A mentally and physically ill, power-crazed, amoral, delusional tyrant. If we don't fight back like our lives depended on it, we won't have a 251st birthday in this country.
January 25, 2026 at 8:05 PM
It is past time to start calling Trump what he is, something we have been lucky for 250 years not to have, a tyrant. A mentally and physically ill, power-crazed, amoral, delusional tyrant. If we don't fight back like our lives depended on it, we won't have a 251st birthday in this country.
This was the dark climax of James Welch's masterpiece novel, FOOLS CROW. One of the finest and most moving novels I ever published in four decades as a book editor. I can't reccomend it enough.
On this day in 1870, U.S. soldiers massacred over 150 Blackfeet—most of whom were women and children—near the Marias River in the Montana Territory.
Jan. 23, 1870 | U.S. Army Massacres Over 150 Indigenous People in Montana Territory
Learn more about our history of racial injustice.
calendar.eji.org
January 24, 2026 at 2:36 PM
This was the dark climax of James Welch's masterpiece novel, FOOLS CROW. One of the finest and most moving novels I ever published in four decades as a book editor. I can't reccomend it enough.
God, this must have cost George Soros quite a pretty penny to fund!
January 24, 2026 at 3:18 AM
God, this must have cost George Soros quite a pretty penny to fund!
For me the second great peak in pop music after the sixties came in the early eighties: the Pretenders, Hall and Oates (don't laugh), Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, the Police, the Cars, Joan Jett, the Thompson Twins, and, not to forget, DeBarge. I date myself, but chacun a son gout.
January 24, 2026 at 2:08 AM
For me the second great peak in pop music after the sixties came in the early eighties: the Pretenders, Hall and Oates (don't laugh), Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, the Police, the Cars, Joan Jett, the Thompson Twins, and, not to forget, DeBarge. I date myself, but chacun a son gout.
A moment to remember a great literary agent and, in every sense of the word, a gentleman of unsurpassed class. Every editor who ever worked with him came away treated with honesty and gentle, if occasionally pointed wit. You learned from him. Ave atque vale.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/o...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/o...
Georges Borchardt, 97, Dies; Literary Agent Championed Wiesel’s ‘Night’
www.nytimes.com
January 23, 2026 at 9:07 PM
A moment to remember a great literary agent and, in every sense of the word, a gentleman of unsurpassed class. Every editor who ever worked with him came away treated with honesty and gentle, if occasionally pointed wit. You learned from him. Ave atque vale.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/o...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/o...
We thought because he could quote rap lyrics and was from Brooklyn that he could be the guy. He is blatantly not the guy and I guess he never was. Jeffries and Schumer are together the political Dead Zone.
Disgusting failure prospect.org/2026/01/21/j...
Jeffries Won’t Whip Vote Against ICE Funding - The American Prospect
While the House Democratic leader announced personal opposition to a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, he won’t pressure his colleagues to do the same.
prospect.org
January 23, 2026 at 9:03 PM
We thought because he could quote rap lyrics and was from Brooklyn that he could be the guy. He is blatantly not the guy and I guess he never was. Jeffries and Schumer are together the political Dead Zone.
Thought for the day: " . . . this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short of itself and dies with the doer of it! but Good, never."
-- OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
-- OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
January 22, 2026 at 3:05 AM
Thought for the day: " . . . this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short of itself and dies with the doer of it! but Good, never."
-- OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
-- OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
Read Bari Weiss's NYer profile. My takeaway: Just another New York intellectual on the make, whose opinions conveniently align with her self-interest.
Increasingly Norman Podhoretz's once reviled MAKING IT feels like a true Text for Our Time.
Increasingly Norman Podhoretz's once reviled MAKING IT feels like a true Text for Our Time.
January 21, 2026 at 10:36 PM
Read Bari Weiss's NYer profile. My takeaway: Just another New York intellectual on the make, whose opinions conveniently align with her self-interest.
Increasingly Norman Podhoretz's once reviled MAKING IT feels like a true Text for Our Time.
Increasingly Norman Podhoretz's once reviled MAKING IT feels like a true Text for Our Time.
Good pick-up! But as a wrote in Bookforum, the book also has a liberating silliness that makes it truly hilarious, and some of it was very far-seeing. I wish Don would let someone republish it, but he's adamantly against it.
I cannot believe we are this many weeks into our hockey erotica era, and not ONE of you cowards has written for Vulture or the like about the time Don DeLillo wrote discomfiting hockey erotica under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell alongside his former coworker Sue Buck.
January 21, 2026 at 10:25 PM
Good pick-up! But as a wrote in Bookforum, the book also has a liberating silliness that makes it truly hilarious, and some of it was very far-seeing. I wish Don would let someone republish it, but he's adamantly against it.
When I was a young editor I got crosswise with a much more experienced one (Joan Sanger, thanks for asking). Someone overheard her saying "The little graduate student is going to be flipping burgers in the Village." Never happened Joan, never happened.
I taught an opinion writing workshop yesterday and made a point about avoiding clichés. I guess it’s hard to avoid them when you personally embody one, though. Personal update: still not ruined!
January 21, 2026 at 2:05 PM
When I was a young editor I got crosswise with a much more experienced one (Joan Sanger, thanks for asking). Someone overheard her saying "The little graduate student is going to be flipping burgers in the Village." Never happened Joan, never happened.