MetaFilter posts tagged with writers and art

So what?

carsonb — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:28:39 -0800

STEP 1 Buy 100 pieces of crap from thrift stores and garage sales.
STEP 2 Get 100 authors to write a fiction about pieces of crap.
STEP 3 ???
STEP 4 Profit!
Significant Objects hosts the stories for all 100 pieces of crap/art, but the last six are still available for bidding: Blue Vase by Lauren Mechling, Umbrella Trinket by Bruce Holland Rogers, Lighter Shaped Like a Small Pool Ball by Rob Agredo, Bar Mitzvah Bookends by Stacey Levine, Geisha Bobblehead by Edward "ed" Champion, and Missouri Shotglass by Jonathan Lethem.

The Texture of Time

mattbucher — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:33:15 -0800

Nabokov and the Moment of Truth. VN talks about metaphors of time, great books, and reads the first line of Lolita. “I’ve been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called Great Books. That, for instance, Mann’s asinine Death in Venice, or Pasternak’s melodramatic, vilely written Doctor Zhivago, or Faulkner’s corncobby chronicles can be considered masterpieces, or at least what journalists term Great Books, is to me the same sort of absurd delusion as when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair.”

Condensed: 'Care, constraint, concise, cut, character, clarity, and charity.'

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:35:00 -0800

How to Write With Style.

The MacDowell Colony

matteo — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:44:34 -0800

"The spiritual, physical, intellectual, social or economic well-being of the general public".
Within the MacDowell Colony's rustic stone and clapboard cottages, Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town, Aaron Copland composed Appalachian Spring and Dubose and Dorothy Heyward wrote Porgy and Bess. Jonathan Franzen finished writing The Corrections and Alice Sebold worked on The Lovely Bones. For decades, the town considered the colony a tax-exempt charitable organization. Not anymore.

Italo Calvino, 1923-1985

matteo — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 15:45:40 -0800

"If time has to end, it can be described, instant by instant," Mr. Palomar thinks, "and each instant, when described, expands so that its end can no longer be seen." He decides that he will set himself to describing every instant of his life, and until he has described them all he will no longer think of being dead. At that moment he dies.
In memoriam of Italo Calvino, who died exactly 20 years ago.
"Calvino's novels" by his friend Gore Vidal. Calvino's obituary by Vidal, il maestro William Weaver's essay on Calvino's cities, Jeanette Winterson on Calvino's dream of being invisible, and Stefano Franchi's philosophical study on Palomar's doctrine of the void. More inside.

Mail Art

dmd — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 20:53:43 -0800

Nick Bantock's gorgeous Griffin and Sabine series is based on mail art, a medium with a long history. Developed in the mid-20th century by Ray Johnson and his contemporaries, today the community thrives, with the internet allowing dissemination beyond the reach of point-to-point mail.

Hubert Selby, Jr (1928-2004)

matteo — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 17:21:54 -0800

"Hubert Selby died often. But he always came back, smiling that beautiful smile of his, and those blue eyes of his... This time he will not be back. My saints have always come from hell, and now, with his passing, there are no more saints". Selby is the author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, (tried for obscenity in England and supported by, among many others, Samuel Beckett and Anthony Burgess), Requiem For a Dream, Song of the Silent Snow. He is being eulogized in the USA and UK, but also, massively (I've just watched a fantastic TV special) in France, where he is much more popular than in his native land (Selby's death was the cover story -- plus pages 2, 3 and 4 -- in the daily Libération today -- .pdf file): Dernière sortie vers la rédemption, L'extase de la dévastation. What makes all this kind of ironic -- in a very Selbyesque way -- is that Selby himself used to say, "I started to die 36 hours before I was born..." (more inside)

y2karl — Sun, 20 Jan 2002 21:07:34 -0800

!Surréalisme! Home of, among many wonders, The Surrealist Compliment Generator--May clinging breasts always come to your aid in the kitchen, was mine--and you can talk to ESMÉ, Cadaveric Enigma Engine Generator*, visit The Department of Objects and Delusions or the cool links page.--and I quote: USENET: For those willing to brave the endless morass of asses, alt.surrealism... Now there's a tagline for here embedded in that there sentence!