A few hundred protesters began to sprint towards the Nile. It is in these moments that built-up fear and tension, the natural state of the Square, take form. →
- Christian Vachon’s letter from Cairo on The Awl.
Recent Fiction
"All the Summers Ahead" | Five Chapters
"Barnegat Bay" | The Good Men Project
"Light at New Latitude" | PANK
"Social Utility" | Keyhole
"Where the Dust Went" | Atticus Review
Friend, classmate, UMass peep in today’s Poetry Section on The Awl:
Awning
I’ve roped myself
out of another one.I’ve left my favorite dress behind.
The way we move from crash to crashis like springing beasts, and I can’t take
credit for the forward march.I allow myself this gravity
because I think it makes othersfeel welcome. You know, we can’t always
be discussing our latest greatest find.Down by the old accident there are those
nice people without hope. They can spellout everything they’re feeling
without the help of poise.They can see until the river bends.
Congratulations, Carrie!
(Source: tinglealley)
Trying to Return the Sun
I don’t need anything but you and some
light the world goes on getting
inferred it is so stubborn and will not
erase things I think I should rub out my
eyes you will recognize me still won’t
you I am much older now older than
I’ll ever be all these eyes in my head
and the light what distinguishes my face
from a tree is the total lack of
commentary as in that tree loves you
honestly loves you I’m the noisy one
who has to say it
David Carr:
Strong voices and a literate sensibility [have] made The Awl an attractive, sticky place.
I have a short story up on The Awl:
1.
Spend part of every day at the beach. I sent Jeff’s phone a picture of the line for cotton candy on the Santa Monica pier, all tourists from the size of them. He texted back: why don’t you photograph people who aren’t white? That Pacific blue-I used to run to the end of the pier and taste it. Jeff would have known what made the Atlantic greener.
My hotel was in Century City, with a mall attached. I could get from my room to Saks Fifth Avenue without my shoulders getting sun. The saleswoman said I looked lovely in a one-piece with a waist cincher built-in. Her nametag said she was Susan Murakami. I decided on a two-piece with steel rings at the hip and shoulder. I said I was back on vacation. So why not, said Susan Murakami. I thought of asking to take her picture, but I knew what Jeff wanted wasn’t photos.
Nicole Cliffe’s choose-your-own-adventure House Of Mirth has been waiting to be written for a hundred and five years:
Premise: You are an attractive, well-bred young woman in your late twenties; genteel, if shabby. You have poor impulse control, no real money, and a reasonably well-off aunt who generally bails you out of scrapes.
(Also: Eric Stoltz—too clean-shaven for a Gilded Age dandy?)
We came to New York City not because we wanted to get rich, at least not most of us: We came here because this was where you could do whatever you want and be paid for it. It was more altruistic—thus, dumber—than capitalistic.
Champagne Candy posted this page from the manuscript of Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf’s handwriting is thin, tight and slanty, somewhat as I imagine the “spidery hand” Tolkien gives to Bilbo Baggins.
The page is one of several in the British Library’s marvelous online manuscript exhibition, which includes drafts by Pope, Blake, Dickens, Wilfred Owens, and this delightful History of England by a sixteen-year-old Jane Austen:
‘The History of England from the reign of Henry the 4th to the death of Charles the 1st. By a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian.’
Which brings me to the hopefully subsiding hubbub over Sarah Palin’s memoir. A number of people whose writing and judgment I respect have questioned paying her any attention—shouldn’t we be close-reading the healthcare bill instead; aren’t we only enabling her; and so on. I think we should be close-reading Palin and the healthcare bill. She came within seven million votes of being vice-president, and while it’s unlikely that she’ll gain high national office, inasmuch as her fameball book and tour is a calculated effort—in collusion with the mainstream media she derides—to channel the beliefs of a substantial minority, I’d rather understand what I oppose, and be able to say precisely why she elicits such strong reactions.
Read on →
The Awl points out this from The Washington Independent, in which Sarah Palin seems be forecasting—or urging—the Apocalypse:
“I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”
Tortured syntax, folksiness real or feigned, disregard of facts; liberals have been mocking and (some) conservatives have been defending Palin’s uniquely tongue-tied elocutions since her interview last fall with ABC’s Charles (“What part, Charlie”) Gibson.
But what happens when we put her words into Standard English? (new type in bold):
Read on →