The Unlikely Disciple, by Kevin Roose

Subtitle: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

It tells the story of a Quaker student at Brown who spends a semester at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in 2007. OK, yes, it's a bit of a stunt, but at least it's an interesting one, and Roose definitely throws himself into the role, a lot more so than, say, Jason Rosenhouse in Among the Creationists. Roose enrolls at Liberty and presents himself as a Christian (At Liberty, "Christian" is synonymous with 'born again Christian') and (awkwardly) fakes up a recent conversion story to explain his presence (and why he has so little knowledge that he would flunk Sunday school for six year olds).

In short he comes to, generally, like the students and staff at Liberty, and a little Stockholm Syndrome sets in I think, and he finds himself simultaneously defending them, and disapproving of their (fairly common) homophobia and the one-sidedness of some portions of the 'education'. He even comes to have some appreciation for Jerry Falwell. And in "you can't make this shit up", he scores a one-on-one interview with Falwell for the school newspaper, gets praised for it by Falwell himself in convocation (I mean, what's not to praise, it was a puff-piece in the Liberty newspaper; the hard-hitting exposé uncovered the fact that Falwell had a peach Snapple every day at 3pm, which he slammed down in 6 seconds). A few days later, Falwell's dead, and this Quaker mole has published the last print interview Falwell ever gave, which comes to have a life of its own as it is reprinted in the memorial for the funeral.

I have once again abused the highlight feature of the Kindle...

( if you click here, I'll reward you with Larry Flynt's parody ad featuring Falwell that led to a Supreme Court case )

More Kindle Highlighting abuse

So I mentioned the Poe 'anthology' that included other anthologies with a single Poe story and a mass of others. Here are some other notes...

A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS By Oliver Wendell Holmes: The only way this could be better is if it was OWH Junior, the Supreme Court Justice. It's really a terrible thing, with terrible puns. And yet, here are the gems I have unearthed so that you need not slog away in the mines yourself:

"Do you know"—he broke out all at once—"why they don't take steppes [get it? take steppes? -es] in Tartary for establishing Insane Hospitals?" We both confessed ignorance. "Because there are nomad people to be found there," he said, with a dignified smile.
...
"Why is Douglas like the earth?" We tried, but couldn't guess. "Because he was flattened out at the polls!" said Mr. Riggles.
...
"Followed the sea," he replied to the question put by one of us. "Went as mate in a fishing-schooner." "Why did you give it up?" "Because I didn't like working for two mast-ers," he replied.

Just some etymological studies here...

"The gable-end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the eavesdroppings flapped against the wall."

(Wiki notes: "The verb eavesdrop was originally a back-formation of the noun eavesdropper ("a person who eavesdrops") which was formed from the unrelated noun eavesdrop ("the dripping of water from the eaves of a house; the ground on which such water falls"). An eavesdropper was one who stood at the eavesdrop")

""I have a pencil," I answered; "but I have no paper. Would my cuff do, do you think?"   "Oh, yes!" replied Miss Lammas, with alacrity; "men often do that."   I wrote on my cuff:"

Aha, the origin (most probably) of off-the-cuff remarks.

"and a rugged tarpaulin[1] dictating from his elbow chair, hectoring the patriarchs"

The gloss identifies it as a sailor. I always thought a tar for a sailor came from using tar to make nautical gear waterproof. In a sense, it does, since tarpaulin "originated as a compound of the words tar and palling, referring to a tarred canvas pall used to cover objects on ships. Sailors often tarred their own overclothes in the same manner as the sheets or palls. By association, sailors became known as Jack Tars." So whether it went straight from tar to sailor, or via tarpaulin (or both), there was some tar in there somewhere.