November 2011
14 posts
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10 Most Reclusive Literary Figures →
My theme for the day.
October 2011
22 posts
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“Ask people in Pynchon’s own neighborhood where they think he might be...”
– Meet Your Neighbor, Thomas Pynchon
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Lit by Mary Karr
I started Lit because I read that amazing article about how The Marriage Plot might be based on Mary Karr, DFW, and Eugenides himself. I thought it was fascinating how some of these literary forces orbited each other, befriended each other, and then infected each other’s writing. I decided I had to read about Mary Karr and bought Lit that very day.
Mary Karr’s Texan, slurry, strong...
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The Outlaw Album - Daniel Woodrell
There is nothing easier in this world than reading something by Daniel Woodrell. His writing is like ice, your eyes just slip sharply over over the words. The Outlaw Album, a collection of short stories, is serious- innovative, beautiful, haunting- and can be categorized with volumes like Children of God, by Cormac McCarthy and A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor. His...
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Susan Sontag - At the Same Time
This book ended up being one those that has subtly informed me ever since. I’ve added books to my “to read” list Sontag mentions (Artemisa, Anna Banti). It was a necessarily fun book to read, the sadness of the introduction and Susan Sontag’s death filtering through the essays, but it was contemplative and informative. I found a lot of really wonderful quotes and lines,...
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Joan Didion on BLUE NIGHTS →
“I Was No Longer Afraid to Die. I Was Now Afraid Not to Die.”
Joan Didion breaks my heart.
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How Zombies and Superheroes Conquered Highbrow... →
This piece is really making me want to read ZONE ONE!
“It’s taken me so much effort just to do as medium-shitty as I’ve...”
– Mary Karr, LIT
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FUTURE BOOK ALERT:
This sounds fascinating and terrible all at once.
Researchers Allen Hornblum, Judith Newman and Greg Dober’s CHILDREN OF SCIENCE, a history of medical science showing that just fifty years ago, children who were considered “feeble minded” were used as guinea pigs for experimentation — 2-year-olds on LSD and electroshock treatment for autistic children.
...
“But the great thing about taking big chances when you’re younger is you have...”
– Amy Poehler
Secreted Sins: Here is a Wound That Will Never... →
secretedsins:
Here is a wound that never will heal, I know, Being wrought not of a dearness and a death, But of a love turned ashes and the breath Gone out of beauty; never again will grow The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath Its friendly weathers down,…
One of my all time favorite poems, and the only I have memorized.
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The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides
I really truly loved this book, and even though it clocks in at just under 400 pages, wanted it to be longer. I wanted to keep reading about the lives of Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell. Eugenides’ characters approached the flesh-and-bone specters of characters from the well-worn classics his readers and Madeleine love so dearly.
Madeleine’s character is the driving force of the...
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“Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There...”
– Wislawa Symborska, The Poet and the World
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“Your own mind can gut you good so easy.”
– Daniel Woodrell, Black Step, The Outlaw Album
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Staring Through the Stitches →
Helen Vendler, in 1998, reviewing: Poems New and Collected, 1957 - 1997 by Wislawa Szymborska and New Collected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer.
“I have written on these poets before, always aware how much better a Polish or Swedish critic could describe their originality.”
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“The serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armor of...”
– Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table
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“A NOVEL IS A WORLD WITHOUT BORDERS.”
– Susan Sontag, At the Same Time
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THE CAT'S TABLE - Michael Ondaatje
As The Cat’s Table is by the Booker Prize winning author of The English Patient Michael Ondaatje, and as I hadn’t read anything by said author previously, I expected it to be a magnified epic. I didn’t have any linguistic expectations. And as I read, my ideas of Ondaatje’s plotting were slowly assured, while my ideas about his language were slowly established. The plot...
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Sam Harris on the Future of the Book →
“And when I really want to get a book into my brain, I now purchase both the hardcover and electronic editions. From the point of view of the publishing industry, I am the perfect customer. This also makes me a very important canary in the coal mine—and I’m here to report that I’ve begun to feel woozy.”
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“We fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. ...”
– Susan Sontag, The Conscience of Words
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Why American novelists don’t deserve the Nobel... →
“America wants a Nobel Prize in literature. America demands it! America doesn’t understand why those superannuated Swedes haven’t given one to an American since Toni Morrison in 1993. America wonders what they’re waiting for with Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon. America wonders how you say “clueless” in Swedish.”
Here’s some thought-provoking mulling on the Nobel Prize in...