Dave's Fiction Warehouse

I love this time of year: When everybody comes out with their lists of the best and worst things of all time, or at least 2008. Or at least in very recent memory. Without preamble, here's my list of the best lists out there. Well, perhaps not the best. But they are definitely lists: 1. The 10 Best American Movies by Stanley Fish. Surprising for its inclusion of Groundhog Day , which certainly belongs on some list. The rest of them ... meh. I don't want to see Double Indemnity on any more best-movie lists. I watched it in 2008 and it seems like a parody of itself. Ditto with Shane . That Joey kid was annoying in 1953, and he hasn't gotten less so. 2. The Best of 2008 by Malu Fernandez of the Manila Standard, which, in the manner of most lists, weighs in with the most recent moment the writer can remember: the profane rant by Kathy Griffin against a heckler in Times Square -- a pivotal moment in celebrity history that shall surely outlive us all. Malu also considers Kath...

Another holiday season has come to a close here at the ancestral manse. Today in a rare burst of energy I took down the tree and the somewhat austere decorations I'd thrown up around the front door. The cats watched it go with the same blank puzzlement they'd accorded its arrival. Unlike us, they have no sense of time passing, no reference with which to mark another year gone by. They have no vague unease at things undone, of possibilities wasted. They do not rue overeating and overdrinking. Perhaps somewhere in the periphery of their feline minds, they'll miss not having ornaments to bat to the carpet, but that's about it. We're not so lucky. Like Janus, the Roman god for which this month is named, we gaze forward and we gaze back, ignoring the present. There's a reason lists are so popular at this time of year. It's the reassurance of enumerating the things we've done, the hope in adding up the things we mean to do. Also, for writers, it's a lot ...