“I’m starting to think Thoreau might have been full of shit. If we aren’t living for others, maybe we aren’t really living.”

This feels like the first chapter of a Stephen King novel.

Norman mailer.

“There was a time I wouldn’t have gotten pleasure from being undesirable, but now I saw it as a superpower.”

“If you’re a woman sitting alone in a bar, it’s always best to look occupied, even if you’re faking it. Most men think they’re doing you a favor, keeping you company, curing you of the shame of being alone in public.”

“I made a very strong mental note to start behaving normally.”

Shoulder-wound waiver granted. “He didn’t step back. I could see him thinking of ways out of this, and I didn’t need him thinking, so I shot him in the shoulder. He stepped back then.”

“I’m not a man, and when a man isn’t a man he’s nobody. And the only way not to be nobody is to do something. So I can either kill myself or kill someone else. Get it?”

Use postal metaphors, like postal materials, carefully. More carefully than this. “Thomas dispatched the two Negronis with the relief of a man chucking a couple of overdue thank-you letters through the slit of a postbox.”

Raymondcarverville. (Port Angeles, Washington)

Jack Reacher, copy editor. “In general Reacher didn’t care for the corruption of written language. U for you, EZ for easy, hi for high, lo for low. He had spent many years in school learning to read and spell and he wanted to feel that there had been some point to it.”

High noirn.

The ideal crime fiction hero. “I am definitely not someone suited to handle this situation. I have no special skills or talents, and nobody, ever, has put me in charge of anything.”

“It must be exhausting to have so many strong opinions. I only have mild preferences, and usually not even that.”

“Everyone’s life needed an organizing principle, and relentless forward motion was Reacher’s.”

Mail performance.

“Let me ask you something,” said the president. “We may have a need for substantial cash for a, uh, personal purpose. Do you know how much is around?”

We’re running out of beer-and-a-shot towns in Western Washington. This place has been closed for more than a decade.

Today’s audiobook on my mail route. @louberney.bsky.social

“Adultery, like full-court basketball, was a younger man’s sport, and engaging in it these last few years had made Sully feel a little foolish and undignified.”

Dorm of the Damned. (Bainbridge Island, Washington)

The Hustler of Money.

“Massacre is obscene. Torture is obscene. Three million dead is obscene. Masturbation, even with an admittedly nonconsensual squid? Not so much. I, for one, am a person who believes that the world would be a better place if the word ‘murder’ made us mumble as much as the word ‘masturbation.’”

My latest Substack. Thanks for reading and subscribing.

Ever feel like a TV show was created with you in mind? People make fun of me for my 1970s fetish, but Max bet tens of millions of dollars that I’m not alone. Best show set in 1972 since QUARRY. #Duster

Jake Qwerty, Private Eye.

“Well, one day, no matter how far up the ladder I go with the police, I still want to write screenplays.’ He got up to pour their coffee. “‘Oh yeah? Like what?’” “‘Thrillers, serial killers, brooding cops.’” “Mika thought, you and a million other assholes. ‘Good for you.’”

Right is wrong. #postalnoir

The Existential Fugitive.

Oh no no no. “But I couldn’t help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in their letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes.”

“Sawtell duct-taped them into beds and made them sing Elton John songs as loud as they could until he tired of it, put one bullet through each of their throats.” @bryangruley.bsky.social

“I kind of hate everything, if you want to know the truth. I hate the sky because it’s blue and water because it’s wet. I hate my parents for thinking I’ll shape up any day and become a Rotarian.”

Special Deliverance. #postalnoir

“What is the use of safety if it deprives you of everything else?”

“Heavily plotted but peppily paced, bursting with quips and blazing with anger, ‘Fever Beach’ is indeed both feverish and beachy: a bottomless margarita served in a ‘Mueller, She Wrote’ mug.”

“I clinked his glass because the last time I didn’t clink a strange man’s glass, he called me a bitch and things got out of hand.”

“She seems to be able to live with the fact that I’m a bit of a shell. When she sees my mind wandering, she doesn’t ask me what I’m thinking. I’ve found that’s the single most important trait I could ask for in a woman.”

“It had been a while since a man asked me to dinner. In LA, you’re lucky if a guy buys you a drink while reciting his résumé.” @alexkenna.bsky.social

My mom and I had our issues, but if nothing else, she gave me a great origin story. She did the best she could, given some epic challenges, and we worked it all out by the end of her life.

“I had an abiding respect for the professionalism of career prostitutes, who wore their dishonesty more openly than lawyers, both of whom bill by the hour.”

“Now take a breath, and shoot straight,” Babs told her sister. “Saint Peter won’t let you into heaven unless you kill at least one Protestant before you get there.”

“The thing I hate most about people dying,” Babs said, “is how skeletons always come tap-dancing out of every closet. As if death isn’t bad enough, suddenly everybody has to unburden themselves, too.”

“I don’t want to think too much about art. I don’t want to criticize it. I don’t want to attend symposia, listen to papers, or discuss it at cocktail parties—although sometimes in my line of work I’m forced to do all those things. What I want to do is clutch my heart and fall down when I see it.”

Mandatory once I hit my sixties next month. Thanks, @bryangruley.bsky.social. I think.

Dead letter dawn.

Ouch. But, well, yeah. Says this new mail carrier. “I was tired of being a lackey. Working for idiots in a giant bureaucracy. The only reason to keep working there was job security. And, I mean, you want job security, go work for the post office.”

“In the next few days, you might hear some things about me. I just want you to know that they’re not true. Later, it’s possible you’ll hear more things about me. Most of them won’t be true either.”

“I make a point of mentioning my daughter in my rare flirtations with men. If someone’s going to be scared away by the fact that I have a kid, I want to know up front. They basically always are, but I’m used to it.” @alexkenna.bsky.social

I’m not too moronic to be a mail carrier! New Substack post up. Thanks to all my subscribers.

“Fabricated of supple brown leather by an esteemed New England manufacturer, the rucksack smelled richly, mysteriously of autumn leaves, grilled lobster, and the sweat and sperm of boys’ boarding schools.”