"To really love Joan Didion—to have been blown over by things like the smell of jasmine and the packing list she kept by her suitcase—you have to be female. … Women who encountered Joan Didion when they were young received from her a way of being female and being writers that no one else could give them. She was our Hunter Thompson, and
Slouching Towards Bethlehem was our
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He gave the boys twisted pig-fuckers and quarts of tequila; she gave us quiet days in Malibu and flowers in our hair. … Ultimately
Joan Didion’s crime—artistic and personal—is the one of which all of us will eventually be convicted: she got old. Her writing got old, her perspective got old, her bag of tricks didn’t work anymore."
posted by Houyhnhnm
on Jan 11, 2012 -
45 comments
There is no paradigm for this kind of place. Accidental Norbiton is contingent, marginal, superfluous, an ugly necessity; it is like the wires coiled under your desk, behind your bookcases; it is like the suitcases gathering dust under your bed, on top of your wardrobe; an adjunct to living, part of the logistics, the bureaucracy, never what you might call life itself, the movement and centre and focus of which seem to prevail elsewhere.
Perfect, then, for a life of accidental failure.
Welcome to Norbiton.
[more inside]
posted by carsonb
on Jul 23, 2011 -
16 comments
Below Code. Comatonse Records has
been around for a little over 10 years, and to celebrate, the owner,
Terre Thaemlitz, put out a
free best-of CD. The
physical copies are all long-gone, but it's
available for download (along with a bonus track that didn't fit on the original disc). Most of the stuff is
relatively noisy (and
some found sound stuff), but there's some cool
electronic type pieces,
rock and pop songs and
solo piano pieces as well. Also of note is
his own personal site, which has links to
a lot of cool essays, typically about
gender issues and music. (There's also links to images of
graphical scores to some of his music.)
[Poking around these sites are pretty much NSFW -- the only explicitly NSFW links are on "his own personal site" and "music", but there's quite a few naked people and suchlike around, including on one of the postcards that make up the main link, so, yeah -- take care!]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me
on Aug 1, 2005 -
4 comments
Do you want to be a writer?
"Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon?... Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book. Complex stories, essays and poems have this problem, too -- the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes he had never noticed. He writes it in spite of that." Luminous and wise writing advice from
Annie Dillard, author of
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, one of the most beautiful books written in the last hundred years (published when Dillard was 29). As a writer myself, I am often asked by younger folk how to become one. Dillard says best what I would tell them.
posted by digaman
on Jan 10, 2005 -
67 comments
Critique Magazine's
On Writing III -
Each year, Critique Magazine's staff compiles essays by and interviews with writers, teachers, and translators of merit for inclusion in the special anniversary edition "On Writing".
Basically, a
shitload of authors provide thoughts on, ahem, writing.
{Both sites are worth a look, imo.}
posted by dobbs
on Sep 15, 2004 -
18 comments
Is McSweeney's Sounding More And More Like Random House? Or is it just me? As a lifetime subscriber and fan of David Eggers, I'm sickened by the glib, shameless commercialism that now contaminates what was once an interesting website for new writers. What in the hell has happened? Or is the new book-peddling climate just another tiresome take on post-post-post modernism or, more likely, just blatant PR?
(Latest example inside)
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Oct 29, 2001 -
19 comments
