Reader friends, help a fella out -- I'm looking for examples of*assholes* in fiction. To be clear, not necessarily bad people or villains, but plain old assholes.

I don't have a specific asshole character in mind, but the first writer I thought of was Martin Amis. The narrator of Money, maybe?

I'm about to become the president of my school's AAUP chapter. It was that or see it disappear from a combination of attrition, inertia, and faculty burnout/overwhelm/despair (I teach at a state school in the US South). I've never been president of anything: think I might build a triumphal arch.

Crisp, clean, and the vocals really pop - worth 2:33 of your time today.

A lot of people are asking and no, it wasn't Elvis Presley.

This post deserves more
attention than it is get-
ting, haikus are hard

I did not know it
was International Hai-
ku day til just now

Oh man, I don't even remember - this was probably 25 years ago.

Kids these days. The best.

There was a pretty major rock star in the audience of my kid's middle school concert last night (my kids go to an interesting school); the kids all knew it, but instead of crumbling (as I once did when a historian whose work I once cited was in the room where I had to read paper) they crushed it.

The Last Battle of Agnes B. | The Saturday Evening Post An elderly woman’s personal war against fascism in occupied Paris.

New fiction by me - in the Saturday Evening Post!

It's about an old woman who spends her days tripping Nazis in the parks of Paris.

www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/04/the-...

From the V&A description: Statue, marble. Handel is seated cross-legged and leaning to his right, playing a lyre. His left elbow rests on a pile of bound scores of his works, titled ALEX FEAST, OPERAS, ORAS and LESSONS. He wears informal contemporary dress, a soft cap, a long shirt open at the neck and buttoned to below the waist, loose breeches, stockings and slippers, one of which has been discarded and lies beneath his right foot. He has also a full loose gown, covering the seat and falling to the ground on either side of his legs. At his feet on his left is seated a putto, who is inscribing the notes Handel plays on paper propped against a viol, while to the left on the base are a flute and an oboe.

Just another Wednesday evening and I'm finding myself enchanted by this 1738 statue of Handel trying to work from home while daycare's closed. collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O34256/...

Oh no.

Tonight, once again, I am exploiting my position as an educator to introduce America's youth to Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Trying to find some solace in the idea that the chaotic mendacious reckless murderous lunacy of the president of my country may be playing a role in discrediting the far right in other countries.

Very true. I'm always using Google Ngram for my historical fiction, but that can only get you so far.

Ha! Yup.

I broadly agree - there are steps an author can take to guard against this sort of thing (eg, immersing yourself in the literature of the period). Here, the author (I believe) is too young to remember when everybody started saying "it is what it is" etc, but it's surprising nobody else caught it.

I'm writing an article on this very thing! Send me your most loathed literary anachronisms! (no film or TV, please) and please reskeet for maximum coverage.

I do think it's mostly an editorial failing - surely an editor or an agent or a reader could have caught the anachronisms (there are others) before it went to print.

I am reading an extremely well-reviewed bestselling recent book set in the early 1960s and characters are saying things like "gifting" and "it is what it is" and other things that nobody was saying until the early 2000s and it's driving me bonkers.

Coping with the present pre-apocalyptic disorder by listening to Neil Young's On the Beach over and over (okay, actually just Ambulance Blues on repeat). It's not helping.

It's based on a true story told, if memory serves, in HR Kedward's book Occupied France (1985), which I heartily recommend.

Thanks!

The Last Battle of Agnes B. | The Saturday Evening Post An elderly woman’s personal war against fascism in occupied Paris.

www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/04/the-...

The Last Battle of Agnes B. | The Saturday Evening Post An elderly woman’s personal war against fascism in occupied Paris.

New fiction by me - in the Saturday Evening Post!

It's about an old woman who spends her days tripping Nazis in the parks of Paris.

www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2026/04/the-...

A large historic American flag is laid flat on a white floor inside a museum gallery, surrounded by photography lighting stands and softbox lights, with wall displays and a mezzanine level visible above.

A close view of a large American flag spread on the floor in a museum space, with two people working nearby and studio lights positioned around the flag for documentation.

A person stands on a mezzanine operating a camera mounted on a tripod, photographed from below, with ceiling beams and a large fan visible in the background.

A historic American flag photographed flat against a white background, showing thirteen stars in the canton and alternating red and off-white stripes, with visible signs of age and wear.

Marking the 150th anniversary of the rescue of six Fenian leaders from Fremantle Prison by the whaling ship Catalpa. The flag of the Catalpa will be on display at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, on Saturday, 18th and Sunday, 19th April 2026 only.
www.museum.ie/en-IE/Museum...

Update: It's really good! Heartbreaking.

Fell asleep listening to Erik Satie last night, and ever since I've felt like I'm living in a haunted--not sinisterly haunted, more like sweetly haunted--house.

Screw it. If WWIII is coming, I'm finally gonna sit down and watch that Ken Burns documentary about the buffalo.