What's Left in the Church (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
N.B.: This is a far more thoughtful response to Feodor's complaint about my remarks concerning Marcel Proust. If this doesn't satisfy him, well, I'll buy him a subscription to Dissent. One point George Scialabba made last evening with which I profoundly disagree (for obvious reasons) is the effect of the internet on literacy . I find this odd, in particular, since so much of what happens on the internet...
BrothersJudd Blog (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
The Death of the Cool : Cool was once associated with reticence, savoir-faire, and irony, none of which is much practiced or regarded these days. (Robert McHenry, November 20, 2009, American) Who and what was cool? Cary Grant was cool, and of course Steve McQueen . Thelonious S. Monk (anybody remember when Time captioned a picture of him “Melodious Thunk”?) and Horace Silver, Fairfield...
SPD TODAY (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
SADNESS AT LEAVING: AN ESPIONAGE ROMANCE Erje Ayden $7 | paper | 256 pp. Semiotext(e) ISBN: 0936756578 Fiction. Friend of Frank O'Hara and "bodyguard" to Willem DeKooning, Turkish expatriate Erje Ayden was the house novelist of the New York School poets and painters during the early and mid-1960s. Ayden boasts of a background in espionage, so this genre-spy thriller could be a veiled autobiographical...
Mike Lynch Cartoons (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
A couple of different clips (from the 1980s? Not sure.) are compiled in this 5 minute video of Paul Krassner interviews. From the Film Archive description, a bio of Mr. Krassner: Paul Krassner (born April 9, 1932) is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958. The Realist, edited and published...
NYC Parks Daily Plant (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
On November 16, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and Council Member James Gennaro broke ground on renovations to the Boathouse on Meadow Lake in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Representatives of the Boathouse's users, TASCA, Hong Dragon Boat, Row NY and community members also attended. "The Boathouse at Flushing Meadows Corona Park has provided visitors...
book-a-rama (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
This is an interesting project from Shona , a new to me book blogger: the Rory Gilmore Books Project . If you don't know Rory Gilmore was the bookish daughter from the Gilmore Girls TV series. I absolutely loved that show. It's now rerun on the Women's Network here in Canada. I don't think I'll do as Shona is doing and read them all. Rory mentions 270 books over the series' run. Shona has listed them...
Poet Mom (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
This has been a really nice weekend. Not only was I able to be a bit of a social butterfly around the Boston area, it has been an amazingly productive weekend (read: no kids!). The rain has finally given way to 60 degree weather and a bit of sun. Hurray! I'm wrote this at Starbucks. Unfortunately, Wifi was down so I'm posting after the fact. **** I should mention that I had a rotten night of sleep...
Brooklyn Heights Blog (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Brooklyn Heights resident, former NYC mayoral candidate and world renown author Norman Mailer died two years ago today from acute renal failure. We thought it appropriate to remember the cantankerous writer with this clip from his 1968 appearance on Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. Also, today’s Brooklyn Eagle has an interesting retrospective on Mailer. Amazon.com [...]
Ink In My Coffee (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 Waning Moon Uranus Retrograde Rainy and mild I’ve been dipping into OUR PRIVATE LIVES: JOURNALS, NOTEBOOKS AND DIARIES, which contains selections from 40 individuals including Paul Bowles, Bill Clinton when he was still a Governor, Gretel Ehrlich, Keith Basso, Tess Gallagher, Gail Godwin, Jim Harrison, Ursula K. LeGuin, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Oliver [...]...
Miami Herald (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
These days, when literature springs from mere experience and memoirs are justified by a change in eating habits, it seems fitting to remark on the heritage of Lydia Davis. Her father, Robert Gorham Davis, was a literary critic and author. He taught literature at Harvard (where he urged Norman Mailer to submit his first short story to Story magazine), Smith (where he taught Sylvia Plath) and Columbia....
Church of the Acronym (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
I think I've spotted what might be ELCA's problem. Have you looked through (Akaloo) Questions for life: Matthew's View ? It's Augsburg Fortress published in cooperation with Presbyterian Church USA (2006) and the cover says it's for grades 9-12. Akaloo means "follow." I don't know if UALC is using the series; checking the internet, I see many churches use this series for Sunday school. I...
Quigley (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
Barney Frank is a pig by Bernie Quigley - for The Hill on 11/08/09 Speaking of self esteem issues, only an overweight career buffoon who proudly and conspicuously talks like a duck to display his endemic contempt for the world west of Boston would say that some of the people at the rally “ . . . appeared to have been the losers in the 'Are you smarter than Michele Bachmann contest?'" Thinking...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
Amid Andre Agassi's self-serving revelations about drugs and his rivals, Geoff Dyer finds some thrilling insights into the game of tennis Norman Mailer reckoned that, as big fights loomed, great boxers "begin to have inner lives like Hemingway or Dostoevsky, Tolstoy or Faulkner, Joyce or Melville". If Andre Agassi's Open is anything to go by, great tennis players begin to have minds like...
the purest of treats (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
He never graduated high school. He laid brick and cinder blocks for a living. Sometimes he pointed out houses and other buildings he had worked on. He used to tell me, "I worked hard, very hard." He started reading seriously as a young boy. He knew a lot about history and geography. When I knew him he read mainly fiction. He liked most kinds of popular novels but especially ones that were...
Professor VJ (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
Now that the comprehensive exhibition in Athens is well underway, it's time for some serious name-dropping in another direction: What do John Ashberry, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Burroughs, Truman Capote, Robert Creeley. my old undergrad teacher Harry Crews, Louise Erdich, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Ted Mooney, my old undergrad teacher Alain Robbe-Grillet, Salman Rushdie,...
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