August 2010
26 posts
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“I still have the hope that at least the media... →
The Times on the case of Zahra (Neda) Soltani, the Iranian graduate student mistaken for slain Neda Agha-Soltan after last summer’s Iranian protests and forced to flee the country less than two weeks later:
“All I had was my rucksack, my laptop and a small handbag,” she said.
Compare with Foreign Policy’s article last month (previously via seaofgreen), which the Times doesn’t...
July 2010
50 posts
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“Juliet’s Balcony,” by me
I...
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it-goes-on asked: Hey dude, what's the tumblr theme you're using?
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View Askew →
The five stories from Glen Pourciau’s Encounters over on Failbetter are a real pleasure, the way they work into you (or, at least, into me). “Yard,” “Salt,” and “Stay” struck me as especially sharp. “Yard” starts off:
I dreaded it when Russ, our yardman, pulled up in front of our house on Thursday mornings. His crew piled out of his truck...
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You May Know Couples Like George and Martha
I wrote about Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? for BWDR Reader Request week:
[They] move expertly between hate and love from one line to the next. Both hate and love bring pain, both bring solace; both are only aspects of their terrible intimacy. They have muddled out a way to survive. To continue, at least…
I am in awe of Albee’s dialogue, and the entire cast’s...
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Kathryn Calder, “Slip Away”
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I’m really enjoying Rachel Sherman’s The Living Room, and her use of third-person to juggle three women’s perspectives. The teenage and elderly voices come through particularly distinctively, and Sherman’s pacing is like listening to good improv; you know a lot of skill goes into hitting notes that fall so right, but it never feels arduous.
Faster Times interview with...
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Piano Lesson
You wouldn’t remember, said the teacher, but that entire block was a Steinway showroom. The student does not remember. She grew up in Teaneck. Her playing is cleaner this week. Everything sounds better on her teacher’s baby grand. On her walk to the subway, the street smells of old books. A father in a Yankee sweatshirt wipes hot dog cart mustard from his chin and looks at her. He...
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Ships That Pass:
You looked about 37 and wore your jeans too tight, which I am prepared to forgive because maybe you’re just not ready to concede the extra pounds—maybe denial is your métier—in which case: okay, we can diet together. We’ll be that couple that jogs.
via Fiona Maazel
via Blake Butler
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The Weight of Words
I’m so excited about Elizabeth Hardwick’s New York Stories. From the Barnes and Noble review:
the later stories, in addition to “the absence of the lumber in the usual prose” and “the relief from spelling everything out, plank by plank,” as she put it, almost exclusively use an unusual, highly attenuated first person.
Reading late Hardwick—Sleepless...
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Jessica's Honey Scones
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon double-acting baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into bits a generous 1/4 cup dried currents 2 large eggs 2 tablespoons honey 1/4 – 1/2 cup half-and-half (1% or whole milk are fine) egg wash made by beating 1 large egg with one tsp. water (or reserve a tablespoon of the...
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Ooh, this makes me happy:
01. Rai Knight – New New (4:52) 02. Sky Ferreira – One (2:55) 03. The Knocks – Make it Better (3:54) 04. Kae Sun – Free (3:04) 05. Naked Hearts – Mass Hysteria (3:22) 06. Phantasmagoria – Séance (4:28) 07. Kid Sister – Look Out Weekend (3:04) 08. White Pony – Going Where the Sun Is Shining (4:46) 09. Cocosuma – The Jar (3:54) 10. Graffiti6 – Annie You Save Me...
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"If you listen closely, you can hear every... →
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welovetriplej:
The Naked and Famous - Young...
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Gulf Coast for the Gulf Coast →
Gulf Coast magazine will donate all subscription proceeds after costs to the Gulf Restoration Network:
an organization committed to uniting and empowering people to protect and restore the natural resources of the Gulf Coast Region for future generations. Officially begun in 1995, the Network works to ensure that the Gulf of Mexico will continue to be a natural, economic, and recreational...
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“Why does it take so long to produce?
Why does it have to be so bulky?
Why...”
– senior U.S. intelligence officer, discussing “a thick, glossy literary journal intelligence report”
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A Pagan Salute to the Passing of the Seasons →
I wrote about the oddly overlooked A Month In The Country for BWDR’s Summer Movies Week:
Isn’t that the essence of summer (at least, ideally)? Anticipation? Always awaiting the moment we’re about to be in. Get comfortable, the movie says; unpack. You’ve arrived, gotten a good night’s sleep. You’re going to be here until cold weather, and on a morning like this, how could that...
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Dear Tumblr
Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to reply to our own posts, so if we have replies enabled and people use them we can reply in turn without having to use Disqus to make comments that don’t show up on the Tumblr dashboard?
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The Way We Plagiarize Now
By far the most-viewed and most regularly viewed individual pages on my blog are posts analyzing Katherine Mansfield’s and Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. Which: yay people interested in Katherine Mansfield and Flannery O’Connor. Multiple visits, however, have arrived by Google searches for entire phrases written not by Mansfield or O’Connor but by me.
I...
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“Tevershall pit-bank was burning, had been burning for years, and it would cost...”
– D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
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Currant Cream Scones
2 cups all-purpose flour (or 1 cup all-purpose, 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour) 1 tablespoon sugar if desired 2 tablespoons double-acting baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into bits 1/2 cup dried currants 1 large egg 2/3 to 1 cup heavy cream, half-and-half, or crème fraîche, plus additional cream for brushing
Into a bowl...
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Vacation Weather
Yesterday was brilliant, in the dictionary and British colloquial senses; real summer-feeling (i.e. humid), but cool enough for a six-mile morning run with clouds like pop-up mountains.
I like the summer Sunday sound of towns: people walking everywhere, outdoor weddings, swimming parties, runners, and, here, parents surreptitiously bringing their kids to wade in the fountain on Washington...
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“Green Grass and High Tides,” The...
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“‘Wonderful’ and ‘need’ are two words that fiction...”
– Chris Bachelder
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Deactivated my Facebook account for the summer. Wonder when I’ll miss it.
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“It seems the longer you live in New York, the more you love a city that has...”
– Jeremiah Moss (via mopostal: woodlandcreature)
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"a great resurgence in magazines" →
Of the journals in this Independent piece on new UK literary magazines, I’d only heard of one, Pen Pusher, which has published two pieces by my friend Pia Chatterjee, who gets a mention in the Independent piece for having gone on to secure an agent (yay, Pia!).
Great-looking magazines, some free and/or downloadable, and lots of writers I haven’t seen in Stateside journals. Time to...
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Facebook Helps You Connect And Share With People...
The other night I logged onto Facebook and found that a classmate from a writing workshop two summers ago had accepted my friend request.
Which I hadn’t sent.
In Facebook’s Help Centre, I found a number of users with the same complaint. Is this Facebook’s latest trick? (At the very least, think of their ad views from our navigating around, trying to find what the heck...
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“Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages,...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald I’ve never known exactly what he means, and always had a picture for it. Cicadas arrived (woke up?) this morning. The lull has finished for this year.
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Seen While Running
A dozen ten-year olds, playing basketball in a cul de sac. A dozen cricket bats lined up on the grass beside the sidewalk. On one of the cricket bats, a decal in katakana.
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"non-filmmakers go crazy over Sundance,...
A good discussion on Annalemma magazine’s blog—spawned from a discussion about editor/writer/journal relationships on HTML Giant and continued on Big Other—about indie lit community and (lack of?) connection to readers who aren’t also writers.
‘Small’* magazines, online and in print, are having a blog-powered renaissance, turning out beautiful publications with smart...
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Maybe "Invisible Vigilantes" Or "The Confidence... →
Paul Krugman:
somehow it has become conventional wisdom that now is the time to slash spending, despite the fact that the world’s major economies remain deeply depressed…
…As Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, recently put it, “There is no intrinsic contradiction between providing additional fiscal stimulus today, while the unemployment rate is...
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A Lull
B&B, Amherst, Mass. Silent ‘h,’ as the BBC (?!) notes in this awesome little intro.
These days between the summer solstice and fourth of July feel to me like a distinct, particularly resonant micro-season, summer fruits and veggies only beginning to peak here in the northeast U.S., daylight already getting shorter. The woods sound drier, fuller, frogs and insects different...