February 2011
30 posts
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“The creative individual is, in a sense, complementary to the society in which he...”
– Niels Bohr
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The Sheep Child by James L. Dickey →
I am here, in my father’s house.
I who am half of your world, came deeply
To my mother in the long grass
Of the west pasture, where she stood like moonlight
Listening for foxes. It was something like love
From another world that seized her
From behind, and she gave, not lifting her head
Out of dew, without ever looking, her best
Self to that great need. Turned loose, she dipped her...
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Russia In Color, A Century Ago →
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“What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a...”
– John Berger
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The New Orleans Corner Store →
Following Katrina, the description of the process sounds eerily premonitory. To a proper uplander, it was not exactly restaurant conversation. More like kitchen table conversation, and for good reason: the New Orleans corner restaurant has always been, in more ways than one, an extension of the kitchen. New Orleanians did and do eat out much more frequently than the average American, and the...
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“The confrontation with the demons does not necessarily lead to the creation of...”
– Gilbert Sorrentino
September 2010
13 posts
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“The magic of the fighter is also part of the mix, the magic that attracts people...”
– F.X. Toole
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All The Paris Review Interviews Are Online →
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Abraham Lincoln Shoots A Dog That Ate A Computer →
Contains my sentence of the day, “Picture Rita Hayworth ascending a ziggurat in gossamer harem pants”.
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An Overlooked Baseball Pioneer →
But the ball—and the boy who played with it more than a century ago—are at the improbable center of a story spanning the Cuban Revolution, the origins of baseball and the breach of the sport’s first racial barrier.
“The story is a surprise to many people,” said Louise Mirrer, the president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, which collaborated on the exhibit.
It is a...
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“Time, to me, forever brings a loss of innocence. As you go through time, you are...”
– Wong Kar-wai
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Froggy's Last Story →
F. GWYNPLAINE MacINTYRE lived in two dimensions.
The F stood for Fergus. That was how neighbors in his working-class neighborhood in deep Brooklyn knew him: a bearish pariah holed up in a fetid apartment stuffed with a lifetime of newspapers, books, belongings and all sorts of trash, who worked nights as a printer in Manhattan and ranted about his horrid childhood.
The F also stood for Froggy....
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The Plot Escapes Me →
This was very encouraging, and it makes intuitive sense: we have been formed by an accretion of experiences, only a small number of which we can readily recall. You may remember the specifics of only a few conversations with your best friend, but you would never ask if talking to him or her was a waste of time. As for the arts, I can remember in detail only a tiny fraction of the music I have...
August 2010
48 posts
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Ken Sparling, On Reading →
I think I must like to read things that hurt and confuse me. When I think about the best things I’ve ever read, they are things that hurt so much I’ve had to stop reading and go back into the world. And when I get back to the world from these books that throw me back into the world, I feel the pain of the world in a new way, a way that confuses and excites and frightens me.
Somehow, the pain of...
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Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff
by Red Smith
New York Herald Tribune
October 4, 1951
Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.
Down on the green and white and earth-brown geometry of the playing field, a drunk tries to...
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"Alex Trebek Never Eats Fried Chicken" by Matt... →
Maureen is working at Kentucky Fried Chicken, where she is an assistant manager. I’ll meet her tomorrow, on my first day working there. Her boyfriend Brad is at rehearsal, playing bass in a Christian death metal band, which is so totally ludicrous that I will never quite learn to let it go. There are three girls somewhere nearby as well, girls that I am dating or have dated or should not be...
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Pele and Maradona: The Glorious, Ludicrous Feud... →
But there’s more to this rivalry than just pettiness. Scrape away the grime of scandals and sound bites, and the contrast between these two great players says something about the imaginative possibilities presented by this game or by any game. Think of how you approach sports at different stages of your life. Pelé, the best player on the best team who scored the most goals and won the most...
