May 2010
32 posts
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“You know, there are the enthusiasts for technology, and they always say —...”
– Paul Auster, interviewed by Jonathan Lethem in The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers (via winterlief, via booklover)
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“Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors....”
– Ray Bradbury talks about why his books are widely taught, despite his lack of a college education. From Sam Weller’s Listen to The Echos: The Ray Bradbury Interviews, coming out next month. (via Moby Lives)
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“We may all be experts at something; we are all certainly terrible at most...”
– Joel Johnson from “Fake It Till You Make It: Harnessing the Dunning-Kruger Effect for Fun and Profit,” part of 48 Hour Magazine’s “Hustle” issue. (via Bobulate)
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“above all else, i value the absurd. art that mocks the observer. i’m going to...”
– This is great. S is for space: tell me a joke.
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How To Make An Alexander Calder-esque Abstract... →
Summer project. This is so on.
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The King's Legacy →
Paul Devin reviews Robert Alter’s book Pen of Iron, which posits that the King James Bible had a profound effect on the style of written English, particularly in the United States. One of the Authorized Version’s greatest contributions to the English language is “parataxis,” a method of constructing long sentences out of many parallel parts connected by “and.”...
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“Don’t tell anyone … but when ‘Star Wars’ first came out, I didn’t know where it...”
– George Lucas, in a letter to LOST executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (via) (via austinkleon)
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, & narrow-mindedness. Broad,...”
– Mark Twain (via binxbolling)
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Good reads: "The Truth and All Its Ugly," by Kyle... →
Imagine my surprise when I started reading this fantastic short story by Kyle Minor after it came up on my RSS reader.
The setting seemed eerily familiar at first — close-knit Appalachian families in a near-future SF setting. But then things started moving closer and closer to home —
the University of Kentucky, and stone fences built by slaves, and Sonic burger, and Man O’ War...
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Mates of State, “Hoarding It for Home”
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“The novelist doesn’t write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a...”
– Flannery O’Connor (via awritersruminations, via booklover)
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“Two years ago, at a conference on traditional building held at the New Orleans...”
– Houses of the Future again. Green houses need to be loved.
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“I visited five of the new houses. I sat on their porches—New Orleans’s original...”
– Wayne Curis, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, examines the future of New Orleans architecture. People sometimes forget that houses built before the advent of air conditioning needed by necessity to save energy. Big windows, high ceilings, multiple interior doors that can be opened or closed to...
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Mythologist of Our Age →
Slate’s Nathaniel Rich has an appreciation of the work of Ray Bradbury, who will turn 90 soon. Now would be a good time to reread a story or two. (via The Rumpus)
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“Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth...”
– Dave Eggers, always an auto-reblog for me. (via wordpainting, booklover)
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New Music? (Meme)
epippen:
I want everyone on here to make a list of their top 15 (or so) favorite songs of all time, please? I want to fall in love with some new music!
Also making my list because who doesn’t like thinking about themselves?
Serious
Grizzly Bear - “Southern Point” from Veckatimest
The Arcade Fire - “Neighborhood #2 (Laika)” from Funeral
Sufjan Stevens -...
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“The little explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine” →
Walker Percy’s essay “Bourbon,” from Signposts in a Strange Land, published in 1975. “Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.” (via Maud Newton)
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Good reads: "Water Liars," by Barry Hannah →
We tell lies to hide ourselves from the pain of the truth. This short story starts out slow, but comes to a boil by the end to punch the reader in the gut.
Last year I turned thirty-three years old and, raised a Baptist, I had a sense of being Jesus and coming to something decided in my life—because we all know Jesus was crucified at thirty-three. It had all seemed especially important, what...
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“A person in despair wants despairingly to be himself…. The self which, in...”
– Soren Kierkegaard explains The Sickness unto Death. Binx Bolling’s “search” is just a way to rid himself of the despair he feels in his everyday life — the despair that comes from the gap between the life he lives (despite how happy he claims to be) and the life he and his...
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“The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the...”
– Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (via sherry, via binxbolling)
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“I’m not writing this book to share wisdom or to inspire people. I’m writing this...”
– Sarah Silverman, writing in the foreword foreword to her new memoir, The Bedwetter. It’s depressing, sure, but then again I’m not thinking of killing anyone anytime soon. (via First Person Singular: Sarah Silverman on her issues with platform)
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May reading list
Fiction
Annabel Scheme
Tainaron
The Things They Carried (once again)
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
NEW The Invisible Bridge
What is the What
And You Shall Know Our Velocity!
Love in the Ruins (in progress, in perpetuity)
Nonfiction
The Portable MFA in Creative Writing
Sickness Unto Death
Writing Down the Bones
The Artful Edit
Several months have gone by since I’ve done...
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“Get coffee. Stare at the screen. Write a bunch of things that aren’t any good....”
– Dave Barry, talking about how he writes. (via 1st BOOKS)