Anything A Man Can Do, I Can

Much Of The Image Of The Amazingness Of America Comes From The Movies Into Other Cultures. And It's Much The Same Thing When You Reverse It. Much Of Africa Is Presented Through Poverty, Through Drought And War. [but] You're Not Presenting People, You're Not Presenting Countries, You're Not Presenting Complexity, And So People Can't Care About An Amorphous Mass Called Africa.

The Greatest Thing About Form And Convention Is That It Saves You From Having To Reinvent The Wheel. Now, Whether You Mount The Wheel To A Horse Carriage Or A Formula One Racing Car, Make It Plain Or Give It Spinning Rims, Those Are All Craft Decisions. But The Fact Of The Wheel Remains: It Will Turn If You Set It Down. That's What I Mean About The Beauty Of The Gifts Genre Can Offer.

The Igbo Used To Say That They Built Their Own Gods. They Would Come Together As A Community, And They Would Express A Wish. And Their Wish Would Then Be Brought To A Priest, Who Would Find A Ritual Object, And The Appropriate Sacrifices Would Be Made, And The Shrine Would Be Built For The God.

That Women Are Mysterious And Unknowable Is Something Every Young Man Grows Up Believing. Men, On The Other Hand, Never Think Of Themselves As Mysterious Or Confusing, And We Are Often At A Loss As To Why Women Want To Figure Us Out.

In This Time Of The Internet And Nonfiction, To Be On An Actual Bookshelf In An Actual Bookstore Is Exciting In Itself.