November 2011
96 posts
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“We seem to be channeling the Gilded Age”
– Richard White, author of Railroaded, discusses the connections between Occupy Wall Street and the Gilded Age at Politico.com. Read the full piece here. (via nortonamericanhistory)
October 2011
91 posts
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October Funeral
The world is shedding its thousand skins. The snake goes naked, and the needles of the pine fall out like the teeth of a comb I broke upon your hair last week. The ghosts of dead leaves haunt no one. Impossible to give you to the weather, to leave you locked in a killed tree. No metaphysic has prepared us for the simple act of turning and walking away.
Linda Pastan, from Carnival...
“Not only did he not believe in ghosts, he wasn’t even afraid of them.”
– G.C. Lichtenberg
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Love Is Like A Cigarette
I loved Conor then. I really did love him, and all the versions of him I had invented, in those houses, in my head, I loved them all. And I loved some essential thing too; the sense of him I carried around with me, which was confirmed each time I saw him, or a few strange seconds later. We knew each other. Our real life was in some shared head space; our bodies were just the place we used to play....
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“After visiting New York City in the 1760s, John Watt described it as ‘the...”
– Timothy J. Gilfoyle, City Of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920
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WatchMatthew Battles, author of Library: An Unquiet History, discussing Libraries and Occupations:
“If you go into an Occupy library, you find this wonderful energy of charged contemplation taking place. I think that’s a quality that a library offers us as a space, a space we make together out of books and our reading of them. The intuition of the Occupy movement to build libraries...
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“I walk through the Christmas city lights, not a taxi in sight and the town going...”
– Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz
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“Our top 1% are a lot more cohesive than 3 million people ought to be. They go to...”
– Sociologist Bethany Bryson (via nortonsoc)
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“I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only...”
– Martin Buber
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“The reader has a choice of three books: one is about a woman who falls in love;...”
– Anne Enright describes three ways readers can approach her new novel The Forgotten Waltz and how it depends on their own life experience and personal morality in this interview with The Paris Review.
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“I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to...”
– Linda Pastan, excerpted from “Lists”
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From an Island You Cannot Name
Thirty years ago, your linen-gowned father stood in the dayroom of the VA hospital, grabbing at the plastic identification bracelet marked Negro shouting I’m not! Take it off! I’m Other!
The Army photograph pinned to your mirror said he was, Black, Negro, dark as West Indian rum.
And this morning, daughter of a man from an island you cannot name, you gasp tears trying...
The #indierocknovels winner, by popular acclaim
@maggieserota Are You There, Godspeed You Black Emperor? It’s me, Margaret. #indierocknovels
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Highlights from the Salon Interview with the...
This weekend on Salon, Curtis Sittenfeld interviewed Lan Samantha Chang, the Director of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and author of All Is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (now available in paperback). Here are some highlights from their conversation:
On the subject of Iowa Writers Workshop grads that go on to publish books:
“There are a lot of recent graduates who have books, but can I...
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#indierocknovels
The #indierocknovels that are making our morning on Twitter:
Pedro the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
For Whom the Belle and Sebastian Tolls
Invisible Monsters of Folk
The Bon Iver of the Vanities
The Broom of the LCD Soundsystem
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxie 500
Now Tumblr, what have you got?
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First Lines from New Books Out Today: October 24,...
Rabbit #1: There is a land not far away from here where rabbit’s live in harmony with all other creatures. Rabbit #2: That’s a complete load of shit and you know it. What the Hell Are You Doing? The Essential David Shrigley by David Shrigley
“The walls were kittens and puppies.” Ghost Lights: A Novel by Lydia Millet
“The child’s name is Melodie. Long ago,...
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Lucifer at the Starlite
Here’s my bright idea for life on earth: better management. The CEO has lost touch with the details. I’m worth as much, but I care; I come down here, I show my face, I’m a real regular. A toast: To our boys and girls in the war, grinding through sand, to everybody here, our host who’s mostly mist, like methane rising from retreating ice shelves. Put me in command. ...
“In your tent, read a book, settle down. It’s a moment to yourself, a...”
– Kassandra Ledesma, 18, high school dropout and patron of the library at the Occupy Boston encampment, reading “Night“ by Elie Wiesel. From the New York Times: “Occupying Boston and Beyond, With Tent Libraries for All.”
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-Happy Xmas (The French and Indian War is over) -The Christmas Song (Papa Roasting on an Open Fire)
If Scott Weiland can do a Christmas album, so can Theodore Wieland.
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“A book can be represented as a conversation with one’s demon.”
– Patrick O’Brian (via theparisreview)
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WatchFrom The Colbert Report last night:
Stephen Colbert: Vice President Cheney said that enhanced interrogation, like waterboarding, is how we got this information. Are you saying he is not telling the truth?
Ali Soufan (author of The Black Banners): I am saying that I was there and he wasn’t.
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“Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we’re going to...”
– On today’s Fresh Air, poet Marie Howe discusses several of her poems, which deal with topics such as loss, love, spirituality, gender, sexuality and intimacy. (via nprfreshair)
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Democracy
“The flag goes to the filthy landscape, and our dialect stifles the drum. “On to city centers where we’ll nourish the most cyn- ical prostitution. We’ll massacre logical rebellions. “On to peppery and waterlogged countries!—at the service of the most monstrous industrial or military exploitation. ”Farewell here, anywhere. Well-meaning...
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The Animals of America
The animals have come down from the hills and through the forests and across the prairies. They are American animals, and carry with them a history of their slaughter. There’s not one who doesn’t sleep with an eye open.
Out of necessity the small have banded with the large, the large with the large of different species. When the dark comes they form an enormous circle.
It’s...
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“He’s like the Jon Stewart of print: Loose, but drum tight. Funny, but dead...”
– David Dobbs describes Michael Lewis and explains why his writing is so damned good. Read Dobbs’ whole essay at Nieman Storyboard.
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How to Write an Important Novel
“But can you?”
“Can I what?”
“Write an important novel.”
“Of course I can. All you have to do is cut out the plot and shove in plenty of misery.”
-P.G. Wodehouse, Ice in the Bedroom
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“That’s what we do, I remember thinking: we break things up and shatter...”
– Joshua Cody from [sic]: a memoir
“No one who has observed the American boy and girl of today can fail to note that...”
– The New Books For Younger Readers New York Times: December 15, 1940
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“Writing is not my problem, it is my solution.”
– Anne Enright (from this video interview with Bookish)
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Watchbookish:
Booker Prize winner Anne Enright returns this month with The Forgotten Waltz, a wry novel of passion and infidelity. She came all the way from Ireland to Bookish HQ and gave us insights about working in television, writing fiction, and which one put her flat on her back.
(via Anne Enright on Writing, TV, and Her “Very Private Breakdown” | Bookish Staff Blog)
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First Lines from New Books Out Today: October 17,...
“Twelve sessions, one every two weeks; but you have no idea what this means, really. I mean how could you, and neither does anyone else, so everybody’s at a loss for words; and it’s ironically reminiscent of those lead grey—laden, amaranthine after-school afternoons of childhood, on the dusty playground, class is out but it’s still too early to go home, so you wait with...
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PAUL KRUGMAN / NY TIMES: Wall Street Loses Its... →
“Money talks in American politics, and what the financial industry’s money has been saying lately is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize that industry’s behavior, no matter how gently — as evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. And this explains the industry’s shock over recent events. You see, until a few...
“I suspect that whatever inventions the future may disclose for the novelist of...”
– Alec Waugh, Speaking Of Books: The Future, Fifty Years Ago New York Times, July 30, 1967
“Catch-22,” by Joseph Heller, is not an entirely successful novel. It is...”
– Orville Prescott’s 1961 NY Times review of Catch-22
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English as a Second Language
That voice—from the tv—that voice, thick smoky cheese, or, no— dark as burnt flan, sweet, venison-sweet in the heavy smoke of a tavern hearth, and hot as brandy. I served that voice for months, in a theater on 13th near Third where losers are the ones who crack first. I gave you azured hours, nights, and you placed your soul, pretty as a dead mouse, at my feet. Gutturals, the candles...
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“People often ask me when and how I knew I was a poet. There are several fancy...”
– Pulitzer prize-winning poet Philip Schultz in this excerpt from My Dyslexia on Poems Out Loud. 