by Vincent McCaffrey | Sep 26, 2026 | Blog, Essays
It would have been sufficient, I’m very sure, to simply discard that fashionable quiver of limp arrows, as I have tried to do, avoiding any comparison to what constitutes ‘modern’ literature over the last few generations. My writing would likely have been...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Sep 18, 2026 | Blog, Novels, Novels in Progress
another preview of the novel What Matters *** This is the scene: it’s a 100 degree day and Jim is sitting on a bench in the shade at a bus stop at Riverview, Kansas, where there has not been a river since the 1930’s...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Sep 7, 2026 | Blog, Novels in Progress
*** [A portion of ongoing novel] Without our poetry, we cannot be. Not as human beings. Perhaps as cogs. The machine can feed us with tubes and shower us with hoses, and pair us off on the internet as it sees fit, to...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Aug 19, 2026 | Blog, Novels, Novels in Progress
[another glimpse of ‘What Matters’] Harry usually visits when he is concerned about something. He never comes out from his lair for the sheer pleasure of the sunshine. He doesn’t own a hat, and the...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Aug 7, 2026 | Blog, Short Stories
the future that was and might be again [a short story about everyday life on Mars] The bradberries were ripe again. Twice a year is more than enough, don’t you think? But if I let them rot on the vine, they’ll bring the...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Jul 31, 2026 | Blog, Novels in Progress
about novel truth *** The common ground As always, the first matter is where to begin. This is a story of what I believe to be an extraordinary friendship. It is...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Jul 28, 2026 | Blog, Unpublished Novels
(from Whatever it takes: a novel in the form of a journal) In a breath of stars Supreme tactician, Geoffrey Donne, having successfully maneuvered Maya out the door for a little privacy, gazing from the field behind the barn tonight, with the sole light from...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Jul 17, 2026 | Blog, Novels, Novels in Progress
[a chapter from ‘Whaterever It Takes’ I asked Maya about a series of words, printed in green, at the edge of a painting on her desk: ‘Lowering, Towering, Flowering.’ Printed in formal Roman letters, as if chiseled there in stone, they reminded me...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Jul 10, 2026 | Blog, Poetry
On this day in 2026,Sox are sold in sizes six to 12;That is, one size fits all,From six to twelve, inclusively.In times to come this will beSomething to smile at,proof of our primitive ways. At a convenient price pointWe now wear sizes six to twelve;Walk, accustomed...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Jun 11, 2026 | Blog, Essays
Information changes you. This is a profound fact, assumed by all of us, but given short shrift, though it’s well worth the time to study. Each of us learn to deal with...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Jun 6, 2026 | Blog, Essays
data dumb There are many kinds of dumb. The ideologically dumb who cannot see their own stupidity through the gauze of a particular ism, is common. Marxism is the easiest example of that, but there are many others in...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Jun 1, 2026 | Blog
It has become increasingly difficult to talk to people in recent years. This is partly due to subject, such as politics, and partly due to several other matters. Because basic communication is the start of things, the...
by Vincent McCaffrey | May 19, 2026 | Blog, Unpublished Novels
[An excerpt from the novel ‘Whatever it takes’] And this is an average day. The smell of cooking is thick in the house when I arrive. I...
by Vincent McCaffrey | May 16, 2026 | Blog, Poetry
Now sick with age,That disease for whichThere is no cure,No care but carelessness,Nor time enough. Now sick with ageAnd left with remembering—That salve of memory,Being my only respite—Forgetting is the greatest fear. Now sick with age,The greater fear is not deathBut...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Apr 20, 2026 | Blog, Novels, Stuff in Progress
[A chapter of the current project, a novel called ‘What Matters’] I awoke with the lifejacket pushed up beneath my chin by the water—adrift in the ocean, in the midst of a puddle of whale piss, so it wasn’t water at...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Apr 17, 2026 | Blog, Poetry
What is remembered better is often just the wish;not what was done,much less what was wanted to be done.What actually happened was mundane,but informs much of what I did thereafter.For instance, in 1969; to get from Brattleboro, Vermont,to San Diego, California—with...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Feb 28, 2026 | Blog, Essays
We have made of ourselves a great orphanage, and all of us little Olivers, asking for more. We learn our morals from coffin makers and Fagins and only expect the worst of our fellow man....
by Vincent McCaffrey | Jan 2, 2026 | Blog, Essays
Grandmothers are like books. They take up time and space, and they smell. They are even dusty. The wisdom of the ages is that simple and direct. This is the source of knowledge we human beings survived upon for hundreds of thousands of years before what we call...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Dec 24, 2025 | Blog, Essays
Not some disembodied shade of a fellow, or a bloodless saint, but the guy in the ads on the back of my copies of National Geographic and The Saturday Evening Post...
by Vincent McCaffrey | Dec 4, 2025 | Blog, Essays
At the time this is written there is a television series being broadcast, spawned by the upcoming 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. This essay does not directly concern that, or the historical aspects of...
