I love the month of October. Each year, it feels like a return to someplace familiar. As Kerouac says in On The Road, “Everybody goes home in October.” Thomas Wolfe agrees: All things on earth point home in old October: sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voiceContinue reading “home in October”
Category Archives: reading
learning vs. education
I started reading Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences about Writing and twenty pages in, it’s already the most useful book on writing I’ve ever read. One of the hard truths from the book: The central fact of your education is this: you’ve been taught to believe that what you discover by thinking, by examining yourContinue reading “learning vs. education”
a poem or a prayer
I’ve always loved how poetry comes from somewhere deep, almost as though it’s the language of the soul. Austin Kleon, in addition to being famous as the Steal Like an Artist guy, is known for his blackout poems. He takes newspaper clips and blacks out most of the words to create a poem. After all,Continue reading “a poem or a prayer”
“all shall be well…”
Around this time last year, as Covid reared its head and we barreled into the political upheaval of fall, I was possessed by an idea. It kept appearing in my head over and over: “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well…” There was a familiar comfortContinue reading ““all shall be well…””
many things at once
This morning’s Writer’s Almanac had an interesting quote from Raymond Chandler, discussing Philip Marlowe, the protagonist of his novel The Big Sleep: He must be the best man in his world and good enough for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; IContinue reading “many things at once”
assembling yourself
I’m slowly nibbling my way through Mark Harris’s new book, Mike Nichols: A Life, an account of the late film director’s life and career. There’s a whole slew of things I didn’t know about Nichols, from the circumstances of his childhood as a Jew fleeing Germany in the late 30s to the heights of hisContinue reading “assembling yourself”
back to the well
I’ve always been fascinated with the art of playing politics. I’m not talking the madness going on in Washington at the moment so much as the shrewd tactics used to maneuver against competitio; things like the classic Mad Men episode, “The Chrysanthemum and The Sword.” This of course had led me to read a varietyContinue reading “back to the well”
a really good bucket
In the process of listening to interviews with Jennifer Egan and Elizabeth Strout, I’ve been pondering the roll of the unconscious in writing and art making. Both Strout and Egan talk about how writing flows from someplace beyond the conscious mind. Speaking about her 2019 novel, Olive, Again, Strout says the famous character appeared toContinue reading “a really good bucket”
why we want mirrors
I’ve written several times about Fran Liebowitz’s discussion of books from the Netflix series, Pretend It’s a City. The most striking of her comments, being of course, the moment when she says, “a book isn’t supposed to be a mirror, it’s supposed to be a door!” Jennifer Egan expands upon this idea in this interviewContinue reading “why we want mirrors”
portals to other places
For some reason, the concept of the portal has been on my mind lately. It could be the hypotrochoid set I bought at a thrift store recently, but it was also likely brought on by this interview with Jennifer Egan, in which she says, “reading is always about finding a portal into another world.” InContinue reading “portals to other places”
joshua chamberlain 