An excerpt from one of my unserious but totally correct newsletters:
Richard Matheson is one of your dad’s favorite writers. I don’t know your dad. Maybe you don’t know your dad. Maybe there’s no dad involved in your life. Dad is more of a sensibility here, a cliché even. Dad is a practical, smart person who gave you all of your favorite paperback novels at the age of twelve. Was that person a librarian, a cool teen girl in your youth group, or maybe a stranger on a bus who smelled like gun oil? Congratulations, for the purposes of this newsletter, that’s now your dad. Along with whichever war they’ve chosen to read about forever—shoutout to my favorite Civil War Dad, Bill Coberly—your dad also loves Richard Matheson.
I can prove it with only two of Matheson’s short stories.
Joel Cuthbertson 