May 2011
31 posts
“The best seller is caught in a peculiar paradox: Its popularity can be...”
– From “Readers of the Pack: American Best Selling” by Ruth Franklin in Bookforum
“Not all women let the camera-phone-wielding bikini police (or their own...”
– So bikini season is back and trend pieces about how women are scared of it are also back. WELCOME TO SUMMER.
“The female body was viewed as the site of a disturbing and incomprehensible...”
– Can’t wait to read this book, excerpted here.
“I wrote newspaper stories in the daytime and fiction early in the morning or at...”
– Mavis Gallant, giving good lecture.
“As a biographer, you see things that the subject never saw. Nabokov writes to...”
– Stacy Schiff is my hero this week.
Reblogged from Samuel Pepys by The Morgan: What... →
tylercoates:
There was no such thing as oversharing before blogging, was there? The pages of a private diary offered an illusion of secrecy, and so in reading them under glass there is a feeling of candor. If Tennessee Williams had a blog, would he publish his thoughts immediately for his internet audience to read? Would he allow for commenting on his blog? Would he remember days or weeks...
“He that cares the most, wins.”
– The Art of War/Rosanne Barr (via caitlintime)
#WINNERS
WatchThis is like catnip for 95.9 % of my interests.
Who cares?
[Yesterday Margaux told me a story that her mother often tells about when she was a baby. It took Margaux a long time to talk, and everyone thought she was a little dumb. Margaux’s mother had a friend who was a bit messed up, and really into self-help books and all sorts of self-improvement tapes. One day, she had been telling Margaux’s mother about a technique in which, whatever problem you came...
“I further understand that this is a team effort, and that the team undoubtedly...”
–
‘Bridesmaids’: Am I Doing Being A Woman Wrong? | The Awl
AND NOW I’M GOING TO HIDE FROM THE WHOLE INTERNET.
Don’t hide, Michelle! This was spot on.
“To require someone to turn out masterpieces is psychotic. To say something like,...”
– Fran Lebowitz. Watching Public Speaking and it is killing me today.
“I always have this theory, if you want to move someone else as an artist, you...”
– Truman Capote, from Conversations, 1966.
“But more broadly, I think what is going on in these indictments of the...”
– Enjoying this little spar between Mark McGurl and Elif Batuman about the relevance of MFA programs over at the brand new LA Review of Books.
[The albino crocodiles are fascinating and disturbing to behold. Their eyes are as pink as strawberry ice cream, and their scaly skin is snow white. Herzog lets us observe them for a while before formulating his metaphor. The Earth is warming, he reminds us. This area, which used to be covered in 9,000 feet of ice, will someday be habitat for the offspring of these albino crocodiles. They will...
The Very Best remixing Kate Bush is MAKING MY DAY.