Though Jeremiah Rosemont used his authority and status several years ago to liberate me from my tenure at Liggett & LaSalle, and the burden of the salary that went with it, my life's work is still a search for living, modern myths that make sense of the world—but more, that make the world.

I have found a nice little niche for myself that satisfies my natural anti-authoritism, reclusiveness and my need for adulation all at once.

[M]any American children have unknowingly become acquainted with Ambrose Bierce's fiction well before the obligatory high school reading of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."

If your world-view was shaped by Tolkien, then it probably seems very natural to you that magic swords and talismans exist in the world. In Tolkien's world, and the worlds of his contemporaries and his imitators, such objects had usually been made by dwarves or elves, a Very Long Time ago; or by someone who used to be a dwarf or elf or angel before he turned bad � you know the drill.

I know your fingers. / I know them in the salt-sea. / I know them, charcoal-smudged, / smelling of smoke.