January 2012
73 posts
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Yes
Do you sometimes drink alone? Have you ever woken up the next morning after a night of heavy drinking? Does your cat wander through the house meowing inconsolably, despite having fresh food and water? Hunger, thirst, friendship, love. Green Bee, Russian Quaalude, Redheaded Slut: IEDs on the supply route to pleasure. There’s a gala in your hypothalamus, helium balloons rising to the...
December 2011
83 posts
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“She was kind of intense, if you know what I mean - kind of spiritual. She was...”
– P.G. Wodehouse, from the story Concealed Art
“I’m losing my edge to the MFA Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed...”
– with even profounder apologies to James Murphy
“I hear you’re buying a typewriter and some Wite-Out and are throwing your...”
– with profound apologies to James Murphy
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Do the Classics Have a Future?
…take, for example, the common statement “The ancient Athenians invented democracy.” Put like that, it is simply not true. As far as we know, no ancient Greek ever said so; and anyway democracy isn’t something that is “invented” like a piston engine. Our word “democracy” derives from the Greek, that is correct. Beyond that, the fact is that we have chosen to invest the fifth-century...
“You know, the more I see of women, the more I think that there ought to be a...”
– Bertie Wooster getting flummoxed by the ladies in PGW’s The Code of the Woosters
“If you find yourself reading Chaucer for more than four hours seek immediate...”
– Legal disclaimer to a hypothetical Super Bowl ad for the Norton Anthologies
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The Piano Speaks
After Erik Satie
For an hour I forgot my fat self, my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment.
For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.
For an hour I was a salamander shimmying through the kelp in search of shore, and under his fingers the notes slid loose from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs that took root in the mud. And what
would hatch, I did not know— a lie. A waltz. An apostle...
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Not Rome
How the car radio carols pushed against the long dusk
and the bumpers of clouds glowed teacup gold—
The doll’s leg twisted and out it popped,
exquisite souvenir. Long and unfolded, I was
dense with signs,
on offer, is there any point to the gift
of these woven bolts of consciousness?
Here, says one to the other, Here I am—
Yes there you are. But that is no cause
to disarrange the...
Harper Lee: Christmas To Me
Several years ago, I was living in New York and working for an airline, so I never got home to Alabama for Christmas—if, indeed, I got the day off. To a displaced Southerner, Christmas in New York can be rather a melancholy occasion, not because the scene is strange to one far from home, but because it is familiar: New York shoppers evince the same singleness of purpose as slow moving...
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But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for five justices in the 6-to-3 Lawrence decision, said, “The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives.”
“The state,” he wrote, “cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”
-from the obituary of John Lawrence, plaintiff in the groundbreaking case Lawrence v. Texas
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A New Poet
Finding a new poet is like finding a new wildflower out in the woods. You don’t see
its name in the flower books, and nobody you tell believes in its odd color or the way
its leaves grow in splayed rows down the whole length of the page. In fact the very page smells of spilled
red wine and the mustiness of the sea on a foggy day - the odor of truth and of lying.
And the words are so...
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“The dominatrix industry works pretty much along the lines of the Italian...”
– Joshua Cody, [sic]
The Roof Nail
A hundred boats are still looking for shore. There is more in my hopes than I imagined. The tiny roof nail lies on the ground, aching for the roof. Some little bone in our foot is aching for heaven.
Robert Bly, from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey
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“With the Christmas season upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of...”
– The back cover copy for Irvine Welsh’s FILTH
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A Winter Morning
A winter morning in northern latitudes: pale blue snow highlights the angle of each roof. Two dry leaves swoop and flutter like moths. A lone doe ambles down the street, like any other neighbor on her way to work. No doubt she has already foraged in my yard. I leave plants around the front of the house for the deerfolk to browse, because this small parcel of land was theirs before it was mine, and...
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A rave review for [sic]
It would be possible to praise Joshua Cody’s memoir, “[sic],” without talking about how teeming it is with what Kingsley Amis liked to call E.S.D. — explicit sexual description. But why would you want to?
This book is Updikean in its cerebral raunch. It contains such filthy and ecstatic sex writing that the author makes you feel you’ve been, your entire life, doing it feebly and...
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A Year on Tumblr
Some of our favorite (and your most liked/reblogged) Tumblr posts of 2011:
- How to Write an Important Novel
- To a Friend in Love with the Wrong Man Again
- How to Curse a Book Thief
- Someone is Writing a Poem, an essay by Adrienne Rich
- Literature is the Sharpest Tool in the Shed
- What if David Foster Wallace Wrote for Groupon?
- e. e. cummings is All Business With His Publisher (i....
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“When the Seine froze solid in the winter of 1892-93 and then thawed, Monet...”
– Diane Ackerman, from Dawn Light
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W. W. Norton & Company is proud to be America’s largest and oldest independent, employee-owned publisher.
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“I’ve waited a long time for a decent book on Caravaggio to come along. For...”
– Jonathan Jones in The Guardian reviewing Andrew Graham-Dixon’s biography of Caravaggio
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First Lines from New Books Out Today, December 19,...
“You who are listeners and love to learn of the heroes of history and their awesome adventures who were loyal to the law and loved Almighty God, come closer and heed me; hold yourselves quiet and I’ll tell you a tale both noble and true of the royal ranks of the Round Table who were champion knights and chivalrous chieftains, both worldly wise and brave in battle, daring in their...
In the ebook of Fahrenheit 451 the firemen set off targeted EMP bombs to selectively wipe Kindle Fires.
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“Vaclav Havel has pointed out, in the spirit of a warning, how easily language...”
– Jeremy Campbell, The Liar’s Tale: A History of Falsehood
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“It is now the month of December, when the greatest part of the city is in a...”
– Seneca The Younger, from a letter referencing Saturnalia
#xmaslit
Our Bodies, Our Elves
Nativity Son
Things Fall Apart as soon as you lose the receipt
and much much more….
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Weather Report
We will have a continuation of today tomorrow
Clouds will form these ragged gloves in which the hands of God make giant fists as He grits His teeth against the slaves of time. And the sun and moon will never rest.
from the boring grind of dark and light: subway tokens glittering on the ground, dogs in their habits, the hours soon or late, nuns and assassins in their daily round.
The divorcée...
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To a Friend in Love with the Wrong Man Again
It was never meant to be sensible, fully understandable. The digger wasp, for example, goes up to the tarantula like a friend and the tarantula freezes, allows itself to be inspected. Then it digs the tarantula’s grave while the tarantula watches. You, I bet, would have guessed with a name like tarantula, the tarantula would’ve been the villain. But it is we who named the tarantula and...
“The best book I read last year — and by “best” I really just mean the book that...”
– A Year in Reading: Jonathan Safran Foer, from The Millions
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Because Paul Krugman Didn't Keep His Calm ::... →
“The most remarkable attribute Paul Krugman has brought to the New York Times is rudeness. The social niceties that accompany his exalted position are utterly lost on him. He does not seek out the company of famous politicians and cannot be courted with flattery or access. He understands that you can’t arrive at truth without explaining why mistaken beliefs are wrong.”
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Ex-Boyfriends
They hang around, hitting on your friends or else you never hear from them again. They call when they’re drunk, or finally get sober,
they’re passing through town and want dinner, they take your hand across the table, kiss you when you come back from the bathroom. They were your loves, your victims, your good dogs or bad boys, and they’re over you now. one writes a book...
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“Get a bottle of really, really powerful, bitter and pungent oil and pour it over...”
– Tom Mueller, who talks about widespread fraud in the olive oil industry on today’s show, also details his favorite olive oil-based treats. (via nprfreshair)
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“I have always found that in moments of heart-bowed-downness there is nothing...”
– Bertram Wooster on the calming effects of splashing about in the porcelain for a bit.
From P. G. Wodehouse’s Right Ho, Jeeves.
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“You have to willingly and even enthusiastically consider a wide range of...”
– Christopher Phillips, author of Constitution Cafe: Jefferson’s Brew for a True Revolution, quoted on NPR’s Weekend Edition [listen to the story].
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“My point,” Seth says, “is that maybe TV makes you God.” Seth says, “And it could be that all we are is God’s television.”
Standing on the gravel shoulder are some moose or whatnot just trudging along on all four feet.
“Or Santa Claus,” says Brandy from behind her book, “Santa Claus sees everything.”
“Santa Claus is just a...
