Archive - The Chatner

What Do The Saints Say About Taking A Bath?

"Likewise, water is not naturally a bath, but water through art is made a bath"

Jul 9 •

You Call That A Prayer, Do You? The Best Criticisms of Individual Prayers on Wikipedia

"Devoid of content;" "One of the things that God never said;" "Isn't even a true New Testament Prayer"

Jul 3 •

June 2025

The Wine-Dark Sea Is About the Pleasure of Outlasting Your Best Friend's Other Friend, and Is the Best Book in the Aubrey-Maturin Series

Mild spoilers ahead for friendship positioning in the last five Aubrey-Maturin books, if that's important to you

Jun 30 •

An Archive, A Book, A Job

Recently a few readers had let me know that the Toast had gone down, which I was sorry to hear about.

Jun 27 •

A Trip Through The Chatner Vault: Dressing Like a Boy in Daphne Du Maurier, Eating a Simple Bean, Did You Take Your Pill? and more

My book is due this week please wish me luck finishing!

Jun 19 •

A Trip to the Vault: All of The Chatner's Anna Wintour and Joan Didion Videos

My novel is due this week, so please enjoy a few pieces from the Chatner’s vault.

Jun 16 •

I Can't Listen To Music While I Write, So Here's All The Antique Furniture I Browsed But Didn't Buy While Writing My Next Novel

Picture Niles Crane, a little embittered, as a fifty-eight-year-old woman. That shouldn’t be too much trouble.

Jun 13 •

The Pages of "Hop On Pop," Ranked By Our Fourteen-Month-Old Son

In the matter of books, Rocco is like a rude pagan king surrounded by literate priests he neither trusts nor is yet prepared to dismiss from his…

Jun 9 •

Bon-Bon The Dog Experiences River Madness

It is all I can do to keep him on the leash until we reach the riverbank. He oscillates with impatience, like a malfunctioning tennis-ball launcher.

Jun 5 •

"Playthings may not count in, tap out, or call time, but await the pleasure of big hands": A Few Runs at Sappho's Fragment 63

Claire Catenaccio (a Classics professor) approached Danny (a very occasional poet and pretend translator) with a theory about the missing portions of…

Jun 2 •

May 2025

The Reluctant Ecumenist: Nobody Resents or Resembles Nuns More than A Charlotte Brontë Heroine

Buried alive, grilled alive, walled alive; if “I thought quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem as an adult” was a popular riff in the 2010s…

May 30 •

Cupid and Psyche, Part II: It Was A Teenage Wedding And The Old Folks Wished Them Well

No one ever seems to be able to agree on just how old Cupid is. Sometimes he’s a beautiful poet-youth of nineteen or twenty, and sometimes he’s a…

May 28 •

#nojs-banner { position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; padding: 16px 16px 16px 32px; width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; background: red; color: white; font-family: -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px; } #nojs-banner a { color: inherit; text-decoration: underline; } This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts