A man out of a job is a species distinct from a working man. There are similarities. And there is a wide difference. The man out has a seedier appearance and longer whiskers. And he feels himself looked at queerly in the street. He is more hurried, though he has less to hurry for. He sits alone in public places such as terminals and depots and hotel lobbies and does figures on the back of envelopes, long division problems of minimal outlay into accumulated savings to give day

Advanced Lafferty. I first read Étienne Gilson in high school. A Jesuit teacher gave me Gilson’s eloquent essay on the university, its history, what it should be, and its probable future. One of Gilson’s most accessible pieces, it made an impression on me. So did the teacher teacher who grumped, “This is from the old Norton Reader , before the Norton people let their books go to hell.” Later, I learned more about Gilson’s variety of neo-Thomism. And I learned that generatio

Your Mephistopheles verse reminds me that I can only see that old devil as a stereotype. When I was working in the electrical business so many years, one of our most popular lines of electricians’ tools was the MEPHISTO TOOLS, with him as an old red devil with tail and hooves. Anyhow he made the best tools around . . . they had to have been forged in Hell itself. Anybody who can make tools that good can’t be all bad. — Letter So one question that may occur to a Lafferty reade