http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/frank_wilson RSS Feed for Inq Col Frank Wilson en-us Sat, 22 Sep 2007 05:48:22 GMT http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/frank_wilson/20070701_The_edges_of_character.html You would think that someone who had, among other things, painstakingly mapped the borders of Pennsylvania, meticulously laid out the street plan for the city of Washington, and traced the first national border of the United States would be a well-known and highly regarded figure. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/frank_wilson/5902656.html http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/frank_wilson/20070128_Amis__imagining_of_gulag_suffering_.html Martin Amis is admirably concerned that the colossal atrocities inflicted upon Russia by the Soviet regime not be forgotten. Koba the Dread (2002), his meditation on the evil works and pomps of Stalin, while replete with a detailed litany of the horrors the paranoid Georgian set in motion, also established that "Uncle Joe" was simply continuing - on a far grander scale, of course - homicidal policies already well-established by Lenin and Trotsky. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/frank_wilson/20070123__57_portrait_of_a_society_Philadelphian.html Richard Powell's novel The Philadelphian has suffered a peculiarly Philadelphian fate: undeserved obscurity. Consider a parallel example: Not many people nowadays remember N.W. Ayer & Son, America's first advertising agency, founded in 1869, and coiner of such immortal slogans as "When it rains it pours," "I'd walk a mile for a Camel," and "A diamond is forever." But they probably would if the agency's city of origin had been someplace besides Philadelphia.