If you’re ever wondering what it takesIf you’re ever wondering what it takes
“Really being a writer is being at home and writing your book and reading.” – Jonathan Galassi (from Nathalie Handal interview in Guernica)
There it isThere it is
“My day is not yet done: the finest hour is over the low wall.” – Eugenio Montale, “Glory of Expanded Noon” (trans. Galassi)
“Road Rave” published by Fox Chase Review“Road Rave” published by Fox Chase Review
Fox Chase Review has published my story, “Road Rave,” as part of their Autumn/Winter 2012 issue. I could post a link here that would take you straight to the story, but instead I’ll post the link that takes you to the front page. It’s a nice-looking page. From there you can find your way to my story if you like.
http://www.foxchasereview.org/
In about three months, if I remember, and I probably will, and if I’m still alive and healthy, as I hope to be, I’ll add the story to my “Previously Published Stories” widget hereabouts.
Rising and fallingRising and falling
“We sometimes think that the historical imagination is the gift of seeing past — seeing past the surface squalors of an era to the larger truths. Really, history is all about seeing in, looking hard at things to bring them back to life as they were, while still making them part of life as it is.” — Adam Gopnik, “Inquiring Minds”
No more than sixty poundsNo more than sixty pounds
“We can see our souls in the contents of our baggage. Pack too much and we risk being weighed down by the place we’re trying to leave. Pack too little and we risk losing ourselves.” — Stefany Anne Goldberg, “You Can Take It with You”
Because…Because…
Because why the hell not…
The imp of the originalThe imp of the original
“Originality (unless in minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or intuition. In general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought, and although a positive merit of the highest class, demands in its attainment less of invention than negation.” — Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition”
Hello, darkness, my old friendHello, darkness, my old friend
“Silence is not nothing, it’s something.” – Michel Hazanavicius (quoted by Tad Friend in “Sound of Silence”)
Challenger deepChallenger deep
“The dream of being a writer and the crazy price one has to pay for excellence are impossible to demonstrate or, really, even to fathom.” – John Lahr, “A Talent to Abuse”
And none of them involve snark attacksAnd none of them involve snark attacks
“Don’t ever forget that you’re a citizen of this world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day.” – Aaron Sorkin, Syracuse University commencement speech, 2012.
Don’t look nowDon’t look now
“Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.” – Peter Thiel (quoted by George Packer in “No Death, No Taxes”)
If you know what to look forIf you know what to look for
“Whereas instruction doesn’t always delight, delight always instructs.” — Martin Amis, “Laureate of Terror”
Don’t go walkin’ slowDon’t go walkin’ slow
It’s three hundred million guns loaded now…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvexn-UWqq8
And other servants besidesAnd other servants besides
“When you cut the heads off your rich folks, you end up with a lot of unemployed chefs.” – Marc Meltonville (quoted by Lauren Collins in “The King’s Meal”)
Or her or it or all three, plusOr her or it or all three, plus
“The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn’t understand us, and we don’t understand him.” – José Saramago, Cain (trans. Costa)
Is it the same note?Is it the same note?
“A wrong note that is played out of élan, you hear it differently than one that is played out of fear.” – Hélène Grimaud (quoted by D. T. Max in “Her Way”)
Not to mention the rest of human cultureNot to mention the rest of human culture
“Without stories, memory falters; and without memory imagination fails.” – Peter Schjeldahl, “Faces in Time”
We’re all girls nowWe’re all girls now
“That spirit of performativity you have about your citizenship now? That sense that someone’s peering over your shoulder, watching everything you do and say and think and choose? That feeling of being observed? It’s not a new facet of life in the 21st century. It’s what it feels like for a girl.” — Rahel Aima, “Desiring Machines”
Pretty people earn morePretty people earn more
“In the world of women’s work, how one looks is as important, if not more important, than what one does: The existential anxiety of identity creation is also economic and social anxiety, because the penalties for nonconformity are so high. Feminine mystique becomes identity itself. The woman who does not possess it, the ugly woman, the overweight woman, the older woman, the woman of color who will not straighten her hair or bleach her skin, is assumed, in a very real sense, to be invisible. She is overlooked on the street, at parties, on dating websites, at job interviews. She is dogged by a feeling of unreality; she does not exist, and if she dares to ‘be herself,’ she is stunned to find that, since her social legitimacy is contingent on artifice, that self is not a legitimate social construct.” — Laurie Penny, “Model Behavior”
Penalties assessed for failure to complyPenalties assessed for failure to comply
“When beauty becomes mandatory, it ceases to be about fun, about play. Dressing up, playing with gender roles, doing your braids badly in the mirror, and eating half your mother’s lipstick in an attempt to get it on your face: Do you remember when that used to be fun? And do you remember when it stopped? Like any game, the woman game stops being fun when you start playing to win, especially if you’ve got no choice: Win or be ridiculed, win or become invisible, dismissed — disturbed.” — Laurie Penny, “Model Behavior”
From the entertaining to the extraordinary to the astoundingFrom the entertaining to the extraordinary to the astounding
There’s this:
It may beIt may be
“More than love, sex, courtship, and marriage; more than inheritance, ambition, rivalry, or disgrace; more than hatred, betrayal, revenge, or death, orphanhood—the absence of the parent, the frightening yet galvanizing solitude of the child—may be the defining fixation of the novel as a genre, what one might call its primordial motive or matrix, the conditioning psychic reality out of which the form itself develops.” — Terry Castle, “Don’t Pick Up”
The access points are conveniently locatedThe access points are conveniently located
“Learning isn’t a set of things that we know but a world that we enter.” — Adam Gopnik, “Broken Kingdom”
And there are no secretsAnd there are no secrets
“Maybe I can describe it this way. I like to play chess. I moved to a small town, and nobody played chess there, but one guy challenged me to checkers. I always thought it was kind of a simple game, but I accepted. And he beat me nine or ten games in a row. That’s sort of like living in a small town. It’s a simpler game, but it’s played to a higher level.” – Ken Jenks (as quoted by Peter Hessler in “Dr. Don”)
Dissizda samizdatDissizda samizdat
“To take a physical object out of someone’s possession is clearly not equivalent to making a copy for oneself while leaving all other copies untouched. If the right of physical property grants the right to control a particular copy of an object — a particular pair of Nike shoes, for example — the right of intellectual property instantiates the far broader power to control all copies of an idea or a software program or a work of art. Whether this extension is valid and justified, and whether it should fall within the same legal and rhetorical purview that addresses physical property, is ultimately a matter of cultural norms and political struggle.” — Peter Frase, “Phantom Tollbooths”
World of poachers poachingWorld of poachers poaching
“Beneath its frontier rhetoric of individualism and autonomy, capitalism is founded on the exercise of state power to defend the institution of private property. Its model of generalized commodity exchange presupposes a novel world in which everything is parceled into discrete chunks and tagged with the name of its owner. This way of seeing things does not come automatically to human societies; constructing a world of private property entails both state violence and ideological propagandizing.” — Peter Frase, “Phantom Tollbooths”
Followed by the cold vacuum of excessFollowed by the cold vacuum of excess
“It takes more than full bellies to make fulfilled lives. Without enough to eat, life is nasty; with merely enough to eat, it feels empty. The escape from not-enough can highlight the emptiness of only-enough.” – Adam Gopnik, “Decline, Fall, Rinse, Repeat”
One can always hopeOne can always hope
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” – William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863 (quoted in The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote)
It could happen even to someone niceIt could happen even to someone nice
“A person whose financial requirements are modest and whose curiosity, skepticism, and indifference to reputation are outsized is a person at risk of becoming a journalist.” — Louis Menand, “Browbeaten”
When the hub gives way, the wheel flies to piecesWhen the hub gives way, the wheel flies to pieces
“Remember what Socrates tells Euthyphro, who supposed that the good could be defined by what the gods had willed: if what the gods will is based on some other criterion of goodness, divine will isn’t what makes something good; but if goodness is simply determined by divine will there’s no way for us to assess that judgment. In other words, if you believe that God ordains morality–constitutes it through his will–you still have to decide where God gets morality from. If you are inclined to reply, ‘ Well, God is goodness; He invents it,’ you threaten to turn morality into God’s plaything, and you deprive yourself of any capacity to judge that morality.” — James Wood, “Is That All There Is?” (emphasis in original)