Inhuman Swill : Page 6
Why is my blog called Inhuman Swill? Because you can unscramble the pieces to make William Shunn.
My prescient and fiery memoir cover shoot
We had no idea that what we were really doing was a cover shoot for my memoir. It was the late summer of 1987. I was stationed with my assigned mission companion, Elder Tim Bishop, in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. We...
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Please help me "Close the Book" on my memoir project!
My sixteen-year quest to publish my memoir The Accidental Terrorist is nearly over. I feel like I've been fighting my way down the field all that time, sometimes making progress, sometimes getting stopped cold, sometimes losing big ground. But now...
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Springtime in Manhattan
Tourists in Times Square Blocking the sidewalk to gape At an ambulance
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The Falcon and the Snowman and me
In 1985, I was a far bigger fan of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny than just about any other musician. The album that infected me was 1982's Offramp, which sounded unlike anything else I'd ever heard. I became a hardcore consumer...
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Send your missionary a margarita!
In a message exchange a few months ago, a friend and former colleague from my missionary days reminded me of a funny story from 1988 involving the elder who was then my companion. I didn't immediately recall the incident, but...
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Our memories remind us, maybe mine is not so bad
I've always believed that I have a pretty good memory—in particular, that I can recall formative events and conversations from years or even decades ago in reasonably good detail. When I started work on my memoir The Accidental Terrorist, I...
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What David Mitchell is up to in “The Bone Clocks”
This post about The Bone Clocks contains mild spoilers. When grappling with works of genre fiction, most mainstream literary critics can be counted on to demonstrate a peculiar tone-deafness. Take the case of The New Yorker's James Woods, who calls...
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Grand Motherfucker (an epic sci-fi poem)
This poem debuted live at Tuesday Funk #48 in Chicago on September 4, 2012, the same day it was written. I've submitted it to a few editors since then, but since they (probably sensibly) turned it down, my birthday present...
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800 miles behind us, one year ago tonight
Unaware of the severity of the storms on the horizon, two men and a dog set out on harrowing car trip from Chicago to New York City.
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