December 2009
65 posts
Bookforum talks to Mary Gaitskill
BF: In “The Agonized Face,” the journalist protagonist, who is drunk at a literary convention and envious of the success of a well-known feminist author, notices that the writer’s face betrays a flash of emotion during her talk and tries to discern whether it is an expression of exultation or agony.
MG: It’s the journalist’s imagining of the core of the...
Chance
may favor obscure brainy aptitudes in you
and a love of the past so blind you would
venture, always securing permission,
into the back library stacks, without food
or water because you have a mission:
to find yourself, in the regulated light,
holding a volume in your hands as you
yourself might like to be held. Mostly your life
will be voices and images. Information. You
may go a long way...
Up in the Air
I’ve forgotten a lot about Up in the Air, but I do remember the sound of his suitcase zipper. Say what you will about Jason Reitman’s montages in the movie, but I did find something familiar in that clipped view of packing. Piles of dress shirts. Slacks in garment bags. A toiletry kit. There are good ways to pack and there are better ways to pack. Better packing takes a lot of...
WatchHow to Shuck an Oyster
Not that I ever get to eat oysters, but this is fun to watch.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
I left my ID card in Maine (guest room, I bet), so this morning I asked the Help Desk for a new one. I wonder if it’s like the IT Crowd over there.
(“I’ll just put it here with the rest of the fire.”)
“No great book is explicable, and I shall not attempt to explain this one. An...”
– William H. Gass, introduction to The Recognitions
Cymbals Eat Guitars - And The Hazy Sea
For...
Dames on lists
nplusonemag:
Take the question of “what I like” lists. Roland Barthes mocked the logic of the taste list in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes thirty years ago, listing his “likes” and “dislikes” in the manner of a Playboy centerfold questionnaire (among his likes: Glenn Gould, the Marx Brothers, white peaches; among his dislikes: Satie, strawberries, “women in slacks”) to demonstrate the...
Art House - At Home With Jenny Holzer, the Artist... →
(via toasterwaffles)
“13. Favorite household chore: I really like doing the laundry, because I succeed at it. But I loathe putting it away. It is already clean.”
Russell Davies on World-Building →
“And, of course, however hard you try, however comprehensive your vision, there’ll always be some tiny detail that breaks the spell, gives the game away, shatters the illusion. There’s always something that breaks the frame. That’s the problem with world-building.”
The Taste of Climate Change
Distressing news from Eastern Europe. From the most interesting food and culture and beyond blog, Edible Geography:
Beer enthusiasts, myself among them, were upset to read this week that our pints of pilsner lager might be the latest casualty of climate change. New Scientist reported the depressing news: it seems that the quality of Eastern European Saaz hops is going downhill each year.
...
“Wherever and whatever I read, I have to have a pencil, not a pen—preferably a...”
– Charles Simic, On the Couch with Philip Roth, at the Morgue with Pol Pot
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes — 40...
Leaving Memphis
“I called it all malarkey,” she says, “because you can’t trust a man with a gun or a heart, but he swears he loves me. So I’ve been riding this thing since Kentucky!” She waits for you to tell her of a better love. You can’t think of a story to compare.
She says, “We’re the same person.” She’s waiting for you to tell her yes, that you both have had the same heartache and know about scars and...
“People will miss that it once meant something to be Southern or Midwestern. It...”
– Garrison Keiller, from The Awl’s article, Real America, with Abe Sauer: Garrison Keillor Will Die
"Here is my springboard into the imagination!"
“How solitary I’ve always felt, in my writing life,” Joyce Carol Oates begins her essay, ”In the Absence of Mentors/Monsters: Notes on Writerly Influence.” J.C.O identifies the most common types of influences a writer can have (the mentors and the monsters), but the ones that she notably had (writer friends) in this Narrative essay. She finishes her series of anecdotes,...
Bon Iver - Blood Bank
It’s been a while...
A Short History of Women
To be fair, I’ll do/consider/believe most things that Emily Bazelon writes (an effect largely caused by following her reviews and discussions on Friday Night Lights), so when I saw she picked Kate Walbert’s A Short History of Women as her Best Book of 2009, I felt like a deal had been sealed, you could say (like Marilynne Robinson? Yes, please). I’d see Walbert written up in...
Pâte à...
Tracking down information about La Pâte à frire was more difficult then I imagined it would be! Thank goodness for Bilheux and Escoffier’s French Professional Pastry Series. I learned that La Pâte à frire is deep-frying batter; you’ve probably seen the word beigneton countless menus before, it’s any food that is coated with batter and deep-fried in oil. Beignets are of Saracen...
The Circular Logic of the Universe →
Kandinsky, a December baby, honored in the NYtimes Science section. Article, by Natalie Angier, is packed with moments of lyricism while she discusses naturally-occurring circles and spheres in nature:
Life as we know it must be lived in the round, and the natural world abounds in circular objects at every scale we can scan. Let a heavenly body get big enough for gravity to weigh in, and you...
The house was just twinkling in the moon light,
And inside it twinkling with delight,
Is my baby bright.
Twinkling with delight in the house twinkling
with the moonlight,
Bless my baby bless my baby bright,
Bless my baby twinkling with delight,
In the house twinkling in the moon light,
Her hubby dear loves to cheer when he thinks
and he always thinks when he knows and he always
knows...
Why I Am Not a Painter -- Frank O'Hara
I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. “Sit down and have a drink” he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. “You have SARDINES in it.” “Yes, it needed something there.” “Oh.” I go and the days go by and I drop in again. The painting is going on, and I go, and the...
“Most novelists have day jobs, even the published ones whose books get good...”
– Emily St. John Mandel, from “Working the Double Shift”
Cursors!
Another quiet Saturday at the library. Shifted ‘Vegetarian’ slightly on the shelves. Compare+contrasted the knife sharpening DVDs. Ran around on the internet:
Working on a theory: Young Michael Caine is my Number One Dreamboat.
Maud Newtonwrites up MFK’s How to Cook a Wolf, drawing out Fisher’s pitch-perfect mix of ‘useful advice and withering commentary’...
Ivory Wedding
Salad fork, dinner fork, folded napkin, knife, spoon, bread and butter plate. Water glass above the knife, wine above the spoon, champagne completes the triangle above the wine. Wedding favors go above the dinner plate or on the bread and butter plate. We sprinkle shells or rose petals across the tabletops. It’s an outdoor reception, so I make sure to anchor the place cards. We’re short...
