February 2012
4 posts
5 tags
Feb 26th
2 notes
5 tags
Feb 18th
5 notes
7 tags
“Hayward discovered the tavern at which this priceless beverage was to be...”
– Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Feb 4th
1 note
5 tags
Feb 3rd
January 2012
11 posts
6 tags
Jan 30th
2 tags
Jan 29th
2 tags
Jan 28th
4 notes
4 tags
Jan 21st
5 notes
4 tags
My mother sang nursery rhymes to me; I sang in chorus; I listened to the Beatles and Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground; Mark said to be part of the now, the us and not them, so I fell in love with Animal Collective; in school we turned the pages of the score of Bach, let’s explain sound, us non-Christians were supposed to cry for Jesus if we didn’t when Matthew told us himself; to...
Jan 21st
4 tags
“Can I be sure, that in leaving all established opinions I am following truth;...”
– David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
Jan 20th
6 notes
5 tags
“It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to...”
– George Eliot, Middlemarch
Jan 12th
3 notes
5 tags
“Poor Mr. Casaubon himself was lost among small closets and winding stairs, and...”
– George Eliot, Middlemarch
Jan 12th
2 notes
2 tags
The Burgeoning
I didn’t write any New Year’s Resolutions this year, and I don’t think it’s just because I had Middlemarch to read. In my room at home I have a list of things I want to do every day taped up on my desk: WAKE up early don’t just do something—SIT there READ a book, a lecture, Wikipedia WRITE those essays EXERCISE—walk, 30 minutes a day, maybe pullups and pushups...
Jan 11th
2 notes
4 tags
“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality...”
– Will Ladislaw, George Eliot’s Middlemarch
Jan 9th
2 notes
4 tags
of COURSE I can write hard if I want to, even write the Great American novel if I so desired the sweat of it, the trouble is getting myself in the situation where I’d have to make it so, where I’d have to live in a bedroom of some widow’s house with a bare mattress and an oven and a pile of books and air to breathe and the vegetarian equivalent of flipping burgers to keep me in a...
Jan 8th
9 notes
December 2011
12 posts
5 tags
Dec 27th
4 notes
2 tags
Dec 25th
3 notes
3 tags
Dec 24th
11 notes
6 tags
“No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand...”
– Ernest Hemingway on The Old Man and the Sea
Dec 24th
19 notes
3 tags
Dec 22nd
9 notes
8 tags
Dec 18th
8 notes
4 tags
Dec 15th
12 notes
5 tags
Dec 15th
4 tags
Dec 10th
2 tags
Dec 9th
3 tags
Dec 8th
1 note
5 tags
Dec 3rd
November 2011
6 posts
2 tags
Nov 29th
4 tags
Nov 22nd
4 tags
A FEW WORDS FOR GD FOR GEORGE DANIEL VEST FOR GEORGE DANIEL THE BEARDED FOR GEORGE DANIEL’S AMERICA George Daniel Vest farms fields; George Daniel Vest speaks straight; George Daniel looks you in the eye; George Daniel dropped out of college; GD helps kids like me find nature; GD occupies wall street; GD got beat down, locked up, set free I think. I searched the internet for George...
Nov 22nd
3 tags
Nov 19th
6 tags
“We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world —...”
– Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian Still chewing on this one.
Nov 12th
7 tags
“We are associated in adolescent and adult life with some friends, who, like...”
– Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nov 7th
13 notes
October 2011
15 posts
1 tag
Oct 31st
3 tags
The book (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction) as a whole is a big old blob of text not unlike the one I just handed you, and also like Hapworth 16, 1924, but the bits I’ve posted justified me reading it in addition to the better Franny and Zooey and Nine Stories. I think it’s safe to say I wish a big brother not quite like Seymour (you know why), and...
Oct 29th
3 tags
“You must know yourself that this story is full of big jumps. Leaps. When you...”
– Seymour — J. D. Salinger’s SEYMOUR — An Introduction
Oct 29th
1 note
3 tags
“I think it should be done over, Buddy. …Please make peace with your wit....”
– Seymour — J. D. Salinger’s SEYMOUR — An Introduction
Oct 29th
5 tags
“God bless ladies with costly, tasteful clothes and touching, dirty fingernails...”
– Seymour Glass, Hapworth 16, 1924 by J.D. Salinger
Oct 24th
15 notes
6 tags
Oct 24th
11 notes
3 tags
“…I can assure you that the surface upheaval will be quite enormous. ...”
– Seymour Glass, Hapworth 16, 1924 by J.D. Salinger
Oct 24th
4 tags
Oct 22nd
4 tags
“Lara’s left shoulder had been cut open. Like a key turning in the lock of...”
– Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, via the lovely Maura, who promises that this piece of perfect poetic prose is a mere ripple on the surface of a far greater pond.
Oct 22nd
6 notes
4 tags
Oct 21st
7 tags
Oct 16th
3 tags
Oct 13th
5 tags
“‘I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance
Oct 5th
3 tags
Oct 4th
5 notes
7 tags
“If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Oct 4th
3 tags
HUSBAND AND WIFE by Allen R. Grossman
In late July, when all the early flowers Were quite spent and Spring with its joy was gone, The day grew cloudy toward the afternoon. At last we could not say the sun had set Or that it had not. Without sight of the sky We speculated on the time of day Like perpetual workers underground Or like the learned, or blind, or like two lovers. I said, being the man I was, “Lest the...
Oct 1st
4 tags
Oct 1st