September 2009
18 posts
1 tag
Just Wondering
So I was listening to David Kestenbaum’s feature on the fight over access to the Medicare database, thinking how NPR news programs increasingly all sound like This American Life—somewhere between amused and amazed, with narration freely referencing the background sounds and interview clips interspersed by their excellent mix.
As Kestenbaum and the Medicare officials entered the database...
3 tags
You've Come A Long Way, Baby
Ken Burns discusses his new film, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, with Rachel Syme in The Daily Beast:
“I’ve got African-American buffalo soldiers in the film, I’ve got women, I’ve got a Hispanic biologist, I’ve got Japanese-Americans, I’ve got this whole parade of human beings who look and sound like all America.”
Hmm… this language is familiar, yet different… wasn’t there...
Turtles All The Way Down
Sir Terry Pratchett is interviewed about his Alzheimer’s. Of course, this being Pratchett, the interview ranges far afield and largely concerns his writing:
‘All this stuff streams down into me. My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots – and that process ...
3 tags
On The Streets Of Northampton
I walked downtown while my car was being inspected. It was early afternoon—September, but hot enough with the wind blocked by the buildings to forget how quickly the day would slant away now after the equinox.
Two men sat on sidewalk bench by a crosswalk. I’d seen one of them stationed at various points on the sidewalk on both sides of Main Street. He has what seems to be a Rottweiler puppy,...
Little Dorrit
is again available for online viewing through September 29. It won seven Primetime Emmy Awards.
1 tag
The Roar of The Canon
Remember the NBC promos that tried to gin up excitement for summer reruns back in the halcyon days of ‘Must See TV’ with the cockily intoned tag line, “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you”?
Um, yeah. Well, it’s also true of books, and many other things for which water-cooler buzz isn’t a factor.
I don’t recall being so quickly and wholeheartedly converted to...
2 tags
MacArthur Geniuses
Literature did well this year. Three awards went to writers: Edwidge Dandicat, Deborah Eisenberg, and Heather McHugh.
Among the lit blogs I frequent, Eisenberg’s win is the most noted and applauded. Her stories, along with Alice Munro’s, were probably most responsible for spurring me to commit myself to writing (some might say, to committing myself and leave it at that). So, mad...
2 tags
Warning! This Link Contains Malware →
I’m less disturbed by how many copies of Dan Brown’s books have been sold than by the effect of reading them. The intrepid author of this post pored through hundreds of pages—or maybe opened hundreds of pages at random—to compile a list of Brown’s twenty worst sentences (just twenty?), such gems as:
Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was...
1 tag
Can Bad Fiction Go Good?
Ranya asks a question that should lurk outside every writing workshop, and that anyone who spends much time writing has probably at some point helplessly confronted:
I have an old story that has a lot of elements that I like very much but just isn’t very good because it’s badly written and stupidly structured, which tends to ruin everything… and no amount of technical/creative ability or...
3 tags
First Fiction...
…by Amy Anderson, from Failbetter, Issue 28. It would be telling too much to even hint what I love about this story (hint: I’m hinting), so you should just go read.
1 tag
Unsafe At Any Speed
Criticizing other people’s driving is like critiquing other people’s performance in bed. We’ve probably all done it, and our listeners have been too loyal, kind, polite or uninterested to say: are you sure you’re qualified to judge?
But, really, even when we’re recounting instances of the grossest incompetence that would reasonably beg the question how x made it through high school let...
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Sleeping In
Ethan held the coffee grinder over the kitchen sink so it wouldn’t resonate through the counter-top—one, two, three seconds, all the way to thirty-one. Courtney was still in bed, comforter pulled up to her chin. She liked to see the grounds as fine as espresso.
The rest of their building was sleeping, too. It was a U-shaped building, squared off around a courtyard. The superintendent had...
3 tags
Another Continent
My father pointed out and it was true: we could always tell the Aeroflot jets by the roar that dug into the sky long after their smoky trails were gone. This was in the back garden, a Saturday one summer.
It was my job, on trips to the supermarché, to choose his beer. I liked the one with the green elephant on the label—a fine choice, he said.
“I’ve stopped having to figure out...
4 tags
Must Not See TV
Today NPR’s Morning Edition looks at the much-advertised premiere of Jay Leno’s 10pm show. I’d thought the idea for the show originated in NBC’s desire to fulfill Conan O’Brien’s contract and keep Jay happy, but, this being NBC, if it did, it’s turned into something else: another method of attracting more viewers while reducing costs. According to NPR, five hours of Jay will cost the same...
2 tags
Attention Must Be Paid
Until this morning, I’d overlooked that today is that anniversary. I have my first graduate assignments due. I have a cold and an unnerving tightness and flutter in my chest following a picnic where a (to me) truly shocking number of people were trailing cigarettes into the air for the rest of us to breathe (thanks, smokers!)
Then in my email inbox was a mass mailing from a retailer I’ve...
2 tags
The Right Adjective, When Misused Well
Nicholson Baker has a new novel out, The Anthologist. The Times likes it. Here’s the novel’s narrator (a poet by trade) after hurting a finger while toting a computer downstairs:
And I knew that I was going to be fine, but that I might not be able to type for a while, which would give me a reprieve on writing my introduction. A great whimpery happiness passed through me like clear...
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Nobody Could Have Predicted
The only economic commentary I’m qualified to give, really, is the sort exchanged when the speaker or listener have both had a few too many, or have been talking so long that punchiness or sheer momentum keeps them going.
And yet I recall a number of conversations between 2005 and 2008, some with friends similarly qualified, others with friends who made their living from their financial opinions,...
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The Way I Wish I'd Thought To Put It
In September, the light changes.
I bought the book for its title, a few years ago now.
The comma encourages one to read slowly; reading slowly suggests significance in the phrase. Its genius is that we guess instinctively what a story with this title is going to be about (and it isn’t the quality of light around Labor Day).
Yet literally the phrase is true, and has to be if it...