January 2010
27 posts
gauntlet:
And writing, more than any other art, is indexed to the worthiness of the self because it is identified in people’s minds with emotion. When a child writes a story she experiences her personal world as something socially valuable: her egotism, if you will, is configured as a force for good; by writing she makes herself important, she asserts her equality with – and becomes...
On being reviewed
Earlier in the week I found myself shaking my head with sympathy when I saw that an author of my online acquaintance had gotten a bit exercised by an anonymous commenter who said unfriendly things about his forthcoming novel on the Guardian website.
Ah, I thought, poor author of my online acquaintance. I know the feeling, but now I am all hardened and jaded and have learned from experience that...
Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger →
(via noraleah)
On my consultant primatologist
I haven’t been writing much this week, and the fact of the matter is that I haven’t been in the mood, because I am awfully sad about the imminent departure of Lauren, my platonic life partner, from the UK. I am so extremely thrilled for her – she is going to be doing a brilliant post-doc at Duke, a university so hospitable to primatologists that they have their own collection of lemurs. And I am...
On a pub in Sloane Square
The plan was for gin-fuelled work at the cafe at the Royal Court - a halfway point, between Richmond and Stepney - but it was (inexplicably) closed.
This pub looks nice, said Olivia.
It was: all cosy corners and leather furniture and pressed metal ceilings and pictures with hunting motifs and a giant friendly dog. I sat down while Olivia ordered some drinks.
This is the problem with...
“A Darwin man has opened a bag of chips and found only one inside.
The...”
– (Man opens bag of Cheese Rings, finds one | News.com.au)
There was absolutely no way I could quote only one line from this story.
(via clembastow)
Never lose faith in the power of good journalism.
On Lauren moving to North Carolina
I think it didn’t really hit home for me that Lauren (best friend, consultant primatologist) is moving to North Carolina – I mean, North Carolina? - until last night when I went over to her house for dinner last night and we nibbled stroopwaffeln and drank camomile tea as we inspected the real estate listings for the neighbourhood around the university where she will shortly be commencing a very...
JHE's Guide to Getting a Book Deal
When the marvelous Rachel Hills asked me to contribute to her post about how to get a book deal, I got a bit overexcited and basically wrote an essay. So it wouldn’t go to waste, I decided to post it here.
Disclaimers: I used to work in publishing, and I keep up to date on the industry for my blogging purposes (and personal interest), and I do a little critiquing of new writing on an ad-hoc...
Ms Somethingchanged is one of the very coolest...
somethingchanged:
Cool
Taking party photos and printing them for your friends instead of blogging them.
Reading cookbooks like novels and not necessarily cooking the recipes.
Introducing two real life friends you know will love each other.
If you see a solo tourist trying to take their own photo in front of a landmark, stopping and taking it for them.
Fool
Flashmobs put on by commercial...
On the Americans I met on the tube yesterday
You are American, but you are in England. You are twenty years old and you are on your junior year abroad. Your mother hugged you so hard at the airport in Bloomington (she drove you there, she and your dad) that you nearly lost your balance to the weight of the giant backpack that you bought especially for this trip, because travel in Europe is called backpacking.
London. People speak English...
On the train, on a Sunday night
You suspect that you don’t have to buy a ticket, not really, because it is Sunday night and no one is going to check, but you do, and it makes you feel like quite a good person.
The train is long, and the car is nearly empty - here, another woman a few years younger than you, plugged into her iPod and staring at her breath as it freezes on the window; there, a group of teenagers who giggle...
Questions? →
I reserve the right not to answer, of course (unfortunately this little widget does not give you the option of saying ‘Ask me anything within reason’).
“On a manicured lawn within the grounds of the Arkansas state capital in Little...”
– From an article titled “No crib for a bed” in the Dec. 5th - 11th 2009 issue of The Economist. So good to see that everyone is solving the big problems. This article followed several pages of extremely bleak reporting on U.S. economic prospects. (via alexjcampbell)
The Freethinkers sound a bit...
Man braves freezing weather to cross car park →
michaelrundle:
The Onion, brilliant as ever.
Yesterday at the gym* I watched a special half-hour edition of BBC News about snow. ‘There is a lot of snow’, said the news anchor. ‘Lots of snow. We have reporters throughout the country. All of them are cold, because there is a lot of snow. Let’s go to one of them.’
‘Here I am in a part of the country where...
“A scooter salesman,” I thought. “I wonder how one goes from being a...”
– The myth of the writer’s ‘former life’ | Books | guardian.co.uk
New Status
dearoldlove:
It’s funny that now you’re listed as “in a relationship” even though the 3 years we were together, your status was always “single.”
DEFRIEND. DEFRIEND.
“Kate Millett might prefer that Norman Mailer have a different taste in sexual...”
– Essay - The Naked and the Conflicted - Sex and the American Male Novelist - NYTimes.com
Very interesting essay - which I don’t entirely agree with, but which is well-written and thought-provoking - by Katie Roiphe in the New York Times about Great American Male Novelists of the 1960s (via...
On the necessary conditions for falling in love
JHE: I'm about to say something very profound [pause]: I think in order to fall in love, you have to be a bit vincible.
F: You're right. I do want to be vincible. I just want to be vincible, but still a bit invincible, because I don't want to be...vinced.