Reflections: Objects in the Mirror Appear Backwards, But Maybe it’s Me

“Ray writes about the people behind the scenes and behind the news. His columns lend depth and texture to the coverage of our region and this welcome collection will make for enjoyable, interesting reading.

(P.S. Ray: Fax me last Wed. column? Someone stole my Times-Dispatch.” )

• Jeff MacNelly, Pulitzer-Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, creator of Shoeand Pluggers comic strips.

“Here is a marvelous collection of good reading from the new generation of columnists. Ray McAllister is not hung up on old-fashioned essays or even semi-old-fashioned imaginary interviews with a neighbor named Art Buchwald.”

“McAllister writes his side of a kind of conversation with his readers. His subjects are politics, family, television, sports, grocery shopping, whatever. His mood can be funny, sad, instructive, whimsical, maybe mildly indignant, but never pretentious.”

“The sentences have a certain rhythm and they tend to be short, which is an engaging quality in sentences once you get used to it. His paragraphs can be so quick, one line after another, that you think you hear a lively tune.”

“Awesome.”

“I like Ray’s writing very much, especially the good spirit of it. And I like his willingness to try something unconventional. The first column of Ray’s that I ever read in 1988, was mostly just a list of his impressions of assorted things in his life. Among the branches of state government, for instance: “Branch Most Like Disneyland But With Too Many People Playing Goofy: legislature.”

“Still relevant, too. Enjoy.”

• Charles McDowell, Washington columnist of The Richmond Times-Dispatch, PBS Washington Week in Review panelist