incendiary comments

I am not that guy.

MAY WE ALL LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES

Let us imbue all rapists with respect. Let us imbue the rapist with Bibles. Let us imbue criminals with cash. We could dump it out of airplanes flying over Palm Beach. Let us give serial rapists a parade. Flags. Flags. Let us bow down and prostrate ourselves into submission by…

We Do Not Know What Art Is

I write books that challenge the nature of identity. I do that on purpose. I am not my characters. I am my characters. A lot of that can be done by having one’s characters confront art. Do they confront art or are these fictional people who only look. Most novels…

TimBarrusNewYorkTimes

I have a very sick and twisted relationship with the New York Times. I used to have one spy. Now, I have two. The fundamental problem with NYT is called Elitism. That word is now a source of friction between the Publisher and the President. Biden will be taking New…

Tim Barrus: New York Times

Great travelers. The great travelers on the happy planet do not include themselves as victims in all the looking back at where they have been. I’m autistic, and really cannot make sense out of how political parties came to be regarded as the tails that wag the dragon. I’m so…

What Book Is It Like

I am now used to the questions (plural) about what book is the book I am writing now like. The question is, I guess, inevitable. I smile and nod. Gravity’s Rainbow. But anyone born after 1987 will not have read it. Or they’ve read it but they are all in…

It Is All A Blur

The wild waters of this roar are made in the fortitude of salt. Just salt. Miles and miles of salt. Mountains of salt. And the bones that fell there. – Tim Barrus

CPR

I would not be worth – all of this – high action traction where the arch of the story itself could explode from pure adrenaline. That tone from word one to the end, lightem up, up, up. Litem up, up, up. I am glad people can coordinate and go for…

Appalachia Kicks

I live in Appalachia. Supposedly, this, too, is North Carolina. I live here because it’s cheap. Economics is the great leveler. I eat what I can grow. Why is that supposed to be a humiliation. This is the land of No One Makes Much Around Here Anyway. We are not…

What Are We Sure Of

The end of democracy. The end of class and caste. A chicken for every pot. If we could all just work together. For togetherness. The end of patriarchy. The end of the hierarchal pyramid that protects the American paradigm that does not work. All of the cultural institutions like education,…

Comment Moderation is Uncivil

Censorship as an apex predator. The ideation of ideas. We are only allowed to think if exposed to an official archive. Google’s search engine and all those little boxes popping up to pull you into the rabbit hole. The New York Times is not social media. The New York Times…

Writers Should Plan Their Escape Now

If I was a journalist who wrote this, I would look for a quiet place where I might hide from the Night of the Long Knives. The Night of the Brown Shirts. The Night of the Executions. The Night of the Long March. The Night of Old Suitcases. The Night…

Tim Barrus: New York Times

Is Maureen Dowd Irish.

Tim Barrus, New York Times

Writing is a hustle. Not everyone gatekeeps. Walking onto the Ted stage, confident as the sun, smiling. Get thin. Get rich. Get a trophy wife. Trophy kids. Trophy house. Trophy car. Trophy pool. Trophy food (take pictures). Trophy job. Trophy office. Could someone please write my Ted Talk. Hustle Ted.…

Tim Barrus: Jared Leto

I would not have minded if the book critic had taken issue with my work. But no. They always go after me as a human being. I am, of course, the monster, the criminal, the itinerant, the Boogeyman, Coyote. I will gladly take Coyote. The coyotes around my cabin eat…

Tim Barrus: To Remove His Metaphorical Humanity From Him

Now, he’s god. Those of us who lead kinda mundane lives can read this stuff about one old man – I call him IT to dehumanize him and to rob him of his humanity which will be a challenge because he has no humanity – and how he lives his…

Tim Barrus, New York Times

Tim Barrus, New York Times

I can hear them grit their teeth at the New York Times. Turn on the AI, Zelda. It’s coming for all of you.

Tim Barrus, New York Times

I do not mean to single out another writer. It’s not her fault that publishing deals fundamentally with not just a blacklist, but a set of blacklists that work like flawless machinery that could separate the good from the bad and the bad from the bad and the good from…

Tim Barrus, New York Times

On any given day, I am apt to see everything from bears to coyotes. The mountain is an awesome thing.

Tim Barrus, New York Times

Tim Barrus, New York Times

Tim Barrus: New York Times

What makes a writer. Risk. You risk that some recent graduate of Brown is performing her internship task of reading who is fit, and who is toast. Some writers get very close to the fire, and they might be warned because – they might be warned. Giving up control is…

Tim Barrus, New York Times

The old rules are not the old rules. There is always something older than the rules. The laws of physics demand it. Why are we looking at the electron differently. Is it a wave or is it a ping pong. Are there zillions and zillions of electrons in the universe…

Tim Barrus, New York Times

Segregation is just one branch that slavery built. Alabama is an evil place of ships they make them in Alabama and sea to shining sea. That sea is heating up. How is it a fiction that any species with any curiosity at all or an atomic molecule for a brain…