White Dr. Martens for the goddaughter. APC for me.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
seeing what happens
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
clamoring storm
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. Vladimir Nabokov Saturday, December 12, 2009
mislaid
Sunday, December 6, 2009
novels do not get easier to write
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
you forget what you want to remember
"When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac's typewriter," Glenn Horowitz told the New York Times. "It's as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss army knife." NYT via Guardian.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
if I thought you would, I'd never leave
A bit of an obsession with ERIE BASIN | tumblrMittens and this artist, Jazmin Berkha, at even*cleveland
Pour Porter via Karey M's (Mackin Ink & T. Ruffles) favorites
grijs always
This bear embrace
The folks at Backyard Bill
Every bag Nivaldo de Lima ever made
And something joyful about forty-sixth at grace
(Now Voyager would love this quilt)
Sunday, November 15, 2009
the matter
"I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is." NabokovSaturday, November 7, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
unless you feel
There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die. Robertson DaviesFriday, October 30, 2009
it is not your business
No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. Martha Graham via Dear Genius, The Letters of Ursala NordstromTuesday, October 20, 2009
we can never know
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
perfect pairing
"As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened." Kazuo IshiguroViewing: The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography at MOMA
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
when despair seized the author
This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?" They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. Photo: Lyell Fall 06
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
what is missing?
"I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world." Maya Lin.Saw What is Missing? at the California Academy of Sciences. Also spending time at (and writing imaginary letters to) Ugly Earring and new to me, Wendy's blog.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
thinking I was dorothy
"As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are to not have one. Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable." Wizard of Oz via MelancholiaThursday, August 27, 2009
after betty
"I've always felt the gap between words and things, the impossibility of articulating what's really out there in the world, the strangeness of naming everything, including the self, how completely arbitrary it all is, and yet, at the same time, how it determines identities."Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
junction of amends
When she talks about meeting her birth parents, the first things Sandra McPherson mentions are the wildflowers. When the thirty-seven-year-old poet first approached her birth parents' Northern California house, she saw wildflowers and mushrooms spilling across the lawn and began staring at their whorls and shapes, naming them in her head. For her whole life, not knowing her own birth name, Sandra McPherson has been mesmerized by naming things their right names...Photo by Gareth McConnell Lyell Fall 2006
Thursday, July 30, 2009
I open the window and ask
Porter and Hollister were featured in NYT today (above) and if you haven't already, vote for Porter's appearance in Mad Men by giving her 5 stars. That would really make my day.Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
any question of the moral
"But any question of the moral inevitably raises—for the artist, at least—the question of the beautiful." John Banville in conversation with Ben Ehrenreich, The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers
Sunday, June 14, 2009
reading to an empty room
Paul Auster: There's a great entry in Kafka's diaries in which he describes an imaginary writer in the process of giving a public reading. So-and-so is up there onstage, and people are getting restless and bored. "Just one more story," he says, "just one more..." People start getting up and leaving. The doors keep slamming shut, and he goes on begging, "just one more, one more," until everyone is gone and he's left alone at the podium, reading to an empty room.The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers
Painting, Egon Schiele via Rooms
Sunday, June 7, 2009
in the third act
At the end of the drama THE TRUTH—which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied—prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.
... We recall how each attempt (each act) seemed to offer the solution, and how raptly we explored it, and how disappointingly we (the hero) were on finding we had been wrong, until:
At the End of the Play, when we had, it seemed, exhausted all possible avenues of investigation, when we were without recourse or resource, (or so it seemed), when we were all but powerless, all was made whole. It was made whole when the truth came out.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
promise me you'll always remember
Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.Painting: '61 Pontiac, 1968-69, Robert Bechtle
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
in a dress my mother made
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
the mysterious edge
"Ninety percent of who you are is invisible." E.L. Konigsburg, The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic WorldSunday, May 3, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
people will sometimes say
“. . . people will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women is politics" Grace PaleySaturday, April 18, 2009
why am I treated so bad
I don't care if it's sunny outside, the only thing to do right now is listen to Mavis Staples on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. It may be the best 17 minutes and 27 seconds I ever spent.Sunday, April 12, 2009
men in hats

Leonard Cohen in concert tomorrow and our own Conspiracy of Beards playing a pre-show show at the Paramount. More info here.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
happy is the novelist
Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives.There are awesome Lolita posts on Now Voyager and Lolita
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
meet me at the center of the earth
Nick Cave's astounding exhibit at Yerba Buena reminded me of Phyllis Galembo's West African photographs. I saw them at Skidmore's Tang a few years ago. More of her work here.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
big love
From today's NYT: "But where the typical...American family seems unified but is secretly divided, the group on “Big Love” seems divided but is secretly joined." And "The book [Under the Banner of Heaven] includes a quotation from DeLoy Bateman, who gave up polygamy and then surrendered religious faith entirely. He told Krakauer he doesn’t regret abandoning it. “Some things in life are more important than being happy,” he says, expressing the unmistakable tension at the heart of “Big Love.” "Like being free to think for yourself.""Saturday, March 21, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
meet me at the center of the earth
Another must see: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents a large scale exhibit of Nick Cave's soundsuits. Through July. Tremendous.in the memory of the forest
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
some days you must
"I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything."From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler
Photo by Jody Rogac via Simple Lovely
Sunday, March 1, 2009
the kiss
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
only too damned well
And a lot he cares -- I could have spared myself the trouble. But this is my attitude to life. Please, please, monsieur et madame, mister, missis and miss, I am trying so hard to be like you. I know I don't succeed, but look how hard I try. Three hours to choose a hat; every morning an hour and a half trying to make myself look like everybody else. Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, and chained? And, mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. . . But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think -- and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.
Now the waiter has finished telling me how to get to the nearest cinema.
'Another Pernod,' I say.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
carson hot springs
From Either the Drapes Go or I Do:You walk in here and tell them you're here and they tell you there are ghosts and if there's a wait you take a walk through the woods where there are mushrooms and violets and fallen trees. To get here you drive along the Columbia river and pass the waterfalls and go over the Bridge of Gods and stop at an antique store where you buy a gold ring for $1 and pick up old pens and glasses. When they say they have tubs available you walk into the water room and get naked in the sulphuric steam and choose a tub length and if you're small like me you choose a short tub. Before you step in they tell you to test the water as it's only hot water and you tentatively ease yourself into the porcelain basin and when you are finally all in you start to cook exquisite with your hair spreading on top like an anemone and you try to sleep but you can't because you are too warm so you look over at Elanor whose body is like an English stem and it feels like being in a salon bath house in the Wild West during Manifest Destiny and every few minutes you take cold swigs of water and pour them over your face. When you stand up on unsure feet they take you to a cot and wrap you tightly in sheets and wool blankets and the only exposed part is your nose and mouth so the only thing to do is breath while cocooned, sweating and sweating, a wet and dark chrysalis. There really isn't anything to think about. There really isn't anything to do but sweat and sleep. When you emerge it is like a peony, unraveling slowly and utterly pink and you need to drink water, a lot of water, and you need to eat fruit, a lot of fruit, but we ate macaroons and drank espresso instead.Posted by patricia.no at 3/28/2008
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
dodes'ka-den
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
this week
Some small intimacies: ici, Discotheque Confusion, emmas designblogg, Now Voyager, the ugly earring, Simple Lovely, blueberry pancakes and fresh orange juice at ungtblod, Jessica's reading list, and the beautiful place where hoping for happy accidents spends her days.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
when one is not yet old
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Burroughs at 95
Tonight, a birthday party combining two of my favorite things: RE/Search Publications and William Burroughs.Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
poets who write prose
I've been reading Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn and this remembrance of John Updike by Lucy Corin on The Rumpus, which pointed me to this For This I Believe by John Updike. Oh, and this is wonderful: "I made tea," by Joe Davis (via this is sippey.typepad.com).
Monday, February 2, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
cover to cover
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
the estrangement
Three years before my mother died, I decided not to speak to her again. And why? During a conversation over the telephone, she had once again let me know that my accomplishments—becoming a responsible and independent woman—did not amount to very much, that the life I lived was nothing more than a silly show, that she truly wished me dead. I didn’t disagree. I didn’t tell her that it would be just about the best thing in the world not to hear this from her.Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
what is not there
And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards -- perhaps all your life, who knows? -- surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies' dresses and the gentlemen's voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music -- everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head.Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
rag & bone


There's plenty to wear in my imaginary closet. Of course, if I really was buying clothes, La Garconne has far and away the best customer service.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
wait, wait, don't tell me
minirobot was tagged and I love her post. Made me rethink this tagging thing. - My first car was a 1966, pink Plymouth Valiant. Three on the tree.
- I used to think I didn't like kids. I thought not wanting kids was the same as not liking kids. Then I met my goddaughter and I realize it's not the same at all.
- I have terribly outmoded taste in music. I like some punk and am a sucker for a mournful female vocalist, but if lost on a desert island, I would most miss Simon & Garfunkel.
- My boyfriend of 14 years is my closest friend and the person whose opinion I most respect in this world.
- I don't see anything wrong with taking two baths in one day.
- The best thing to come from this blog is a friendship with The Ugly Earring.
- I've never owned a Royal Quiet Deluxe. My first typewriter was a rather humble Smith Corona.
- I really do want Carl Kassel's voice on my home answering machine.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
you
From Maud NewtonNow, thirty years later, [Jonathan] Baumbach’s most recent publisher, like his last, has gone under, and in this case the enterprise went belly-up just months after his latest book, You, appeared. My friend Lauren Cerand was so passionate about You, she took Baumbach on as a publicity client despite the difficulties of reviving a book after the initial media window has closed. She and the author have started a site dedicated to the project.
Below Baumbach remembers the circumstances that led him and other writers to create Fiction Collective, and he compares the climate of 1974 with the dire situation publishing finds itself in today.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
in return
I left for Japan on October 25, 1984, unsuspecting that this date would mark the beginning of a 92 day countdown to the end of a love affair. Nothing extraordinary -- but to me, at the the time, the unhappiest moment of my life, and one for which I blamed that trip itself. I got back to France on January 28, 1985. From that moment, whenever people asked me how it went, I chose to skip the Far East bit and tell them about my suffering instead. In return I started asking both friend and chance encounters: "When did you suffer most?" -- I decided to continue such exchanges until I had got over my pain by comparing it with other people's, or had worn out my own story through sheer repetition.Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
watching
Friends with Money (above), Lovely & Amazing, and Walking and Talking. Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener.
Friday, January 2, 2009
a particular kind of heaven
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
if you were with me
Mom and I went to Heath Ceramics, Afghanistan, and saw the Soul Children of Chicago. There were temari balls and cookies with D's mom. And chapino with Jeff and Silke, Christmas dinner with Kathleen, Slumdog Millionaire with Clara, elephant seals with Ally and Masin...Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
on holiday
I haven't been here too much lately, I know. When I have a moment, I've been daydreaming over at Scout Holiday. I love her Little Gift Guide and her Holiday Wish List.Wednesday, December 17, 2008
the lives of others
My beau and I finally rented this last night after THIS MORNING FOG's post. I cannot shake the mood of it.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
fifth floor
SFMOMA offers a spellbinding retrospective of Martin Puryear. Through January 25.Sunday, December 7, 2008
a fragile eyeful
"...But Miss Golightly a fragile eyeful even though attired like a tomboy in slacks and leather jacket appeared relatively unconcerned..." Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman CapoteFriday, December 5, 2008
if I in my north room
If I when my wife is sleepingand the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
first they're good
“People are strange, but more than that, they're good. They're good first, then strange.”Dave Eggers, founder of 826 Valencia
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
inexhaustible engagement
She seemed to be at least twice as alive as most of us—to know everything, to do everything, to be inexhaustibly engaged. Her arresting appearance was familiar even to many nonreaders from the photographs that recorded it over several decades and registered the glamour and magnetism—the sheer size—of her personality, and her celebrity was all the more potent and irreversible because the place she occupied was so far outside the usual radius of the spotlight.Monday, December 1, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
spending my time
At other pretty things and duskin; dreaming about this dress and listening to This Mortal Coil.Monday, November 24, 2008
it must suggest something about me has changed
My Love,I went to Yamamoto to choose my trousseau. For our reunion. I spent hours trying things on. In the end I chose black silk trousers and two shirts to be worn together, a gray one and a blue one. I want everything to be perfect. My outfit must travel well in the plane and suit the circumstances: a reunion in India. It must be elegant but without affectation, chic but understated, and flattering. It must suggest that something about me has changed, a subtle metamorphisis, show you how I've missed you, but that you're not totally indispensable to me and even that I have grown more beautiful, more mature, away from you...
Saturday, November 22, 2008
who shall say
The Lover, by Marguerite Duras is less than 30,000 words. The Postman Always Rings Twice, by Richard Cain, about 35,000. Fahrenheit 451 about 45,000; and The Great Gatsby, maybe, 50,000.Wednesday, November 19, 2008
maiden & moonflower
"One's self is always shifting in relationship to beauty and you always have to be able to incorporate yourself or your new self into life. Like your skin starts hanging off your arms and stuff, and then you have to think, well that’s really beautiful too. It just isn’t beautiful in a way that I knew it was beautiful before" Kiki Smith.Tuesday, November 18, 2008
interpretation
Monday, November 17, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
me llamen calle
I don't think Manu Chao's Radiolina or the video for Me Llamen Calle won in last night Latin Grammy's, but they should have. Me Llamen Calle, Manu Chao's tribute to s-x workers, is well worth a listen.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
I never can quite say
I never can quite say as much as I know. I look at other parrots and I wonder if it's the same for them, if somebody is trapped in each of them paying some kind of price for living their life in a certain way. For instance, "Hello," I say, and I'm sitting on a perch in a pet store in Houston and what I'm really thinking is Holy shit. It's you. And what's happened is I'm looking at my wife.Photo from Either The Drapes Go Or I Do
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
truant
you were saying
Thursday, November 6, 2008
minor obsessions
These honeycomb necklaces from Black Sheep & Prodigal Sons, thin black t-shirts from Acne and American Vintage, anything written by J.M. Coetzee, Kill City jeans, David Byrne, Kern River Valley, Sister Mary Corita, public radio, and Kiki Smith.Tuesday, October 28, 2008
so long
Monday, October 27, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
palm springs
I'm in Palm Springs for the week, a place I don't know all that well. Reading Th1rteen R3asons Why, Story of A Girl, and Living Dead Girl (all YA). Lots of buzz about Living Dead Girl (especially among young adult librarians), most of it positive. Also reading the W with Angelina Jolie on the cover and an amazing spread by Roni Horn inside, Paul Pincus's blog, and the SFMOMA's Nov/Dec newsletter.Wednesday, October 22, 2008
a slug of good whiskey
Bloggers have recipes. My friend Jenny has a recipe she promises will make kale taste good. Maybe. I have a recipe too. I got it from a blog (Maud, of course). It's writer Kate Christensen's cure for the common cold. But I find that it'll cure almost anything. The following is excerpted from Maud:Day two home from work with a killer cold, and my only consolation is novelist Kate Christensen’s hot toddy. Since she passed it along last fall, the drink has eclipsed spicy tomato soup as the Maud household’s preferred remedy. It proves — as we always knew deep in our hearts — that Bourbon cures everything.
Add boiling water to (in the biggest cup in the house; this is no time to fuck around with anything dainty) the juice of 1 lemon, a big wad of honey, a slug of good whiskey [Ed. Note: I’ve been using Maker’s Mark], and as much cayenne pepper as you can tolerate. If it’s morning, add a tea bag.
Photo Nigel Shafran via Horse Hunting
speaking of stella
This Stella McCartney bodysuit via the lovely loveology. My goddaughter has a whole wardrobe of bodysuits she layers under everything. So cool.
watching
Monday, October 20, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
would it stand on the wall?
From Tokion, a fantastic interview with Sophie Calle by artist Jill Magid:Most recently, she [Calle] was behind the most talked about exhibition at the 2007 Venice Biennale, Take care of yourself. Calle analyzed an ex-boyfriend’s break-up email by asking 107 women to interpret his words...
Jill Magid: You incorporate a few different methodologies in your work. One of them seems like this natural catalyst—something happens in your life, and then you set [up for] yourself what you call a ‘game.’ So, Take care of yourself was something that happened—a break-up—and then you set up a game—
Sophie Calle: And they have a therapeutic motor aspect, just as a start: ‘What can I do not to suffer?’
Jill Magid: You don’t think you start this process as a work?
Sophie Calle: No, there are different categories, as you say. The category in which it is my life, many times starts as a reaction to something. Like, I received that love letter, what can I do [to] counter it, not just to be a victim of it. Maybe the first step is therapeutic, but if it’s only therapeutic, I may as well go buy a dress at the corner of the street. So, immediately [I think], ‘Would [it] stand on the wall?’ If I think yes, I go on.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
the misfits


The photographers of Magnum Photos were given exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the filming of The Misfits. Led by Magnum co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson, the photographers arrived on the set in pairs and alternated every two weeks. Nearly 100 photos available on PBS.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
one bad sofa
"I always say - a prejudice on my part, I'm sure - you can tell a lot about a person's character from his choice of sofa. Sofas constitute a realm inviolate unto themselves. This, however, is something that only those who have grown up sitting on good sofas will appreciate. It's like growing up reading good books or listening to good music. One good sofa breeds another good sofa; one bad sofa breeds another bad sofa. That's how it goes." Haruki Murakami. Appearing at UC Berkely this week.Wednesday, October 8, 2008
muxtape remembers
A Continuous Lean offers up a link for your almost forgotten playlists. My favorite for dancing around the house? This, from someone named Kalpana: - The Virgins — Rich Girls
- Cat Power — New York
- Nellie McKay — Identity Theft
- Delta Spirit — Gimme Some Motivation
- Elizabeth & The Catapult — Waiting for the Kill
- Mechanical Bride — Umbrella
- Ray LaMontagne — Three More Days
- Joe Cocker — The Letter
- Mark Ronson Ft. Lily Allen — Oh My God
- Ixley — Luchini (Wounded Mix) - Camp Lo
- Hellogoodbye — Oh It Is Love
- Vampire Weekend — A-Punk
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
the old typewriter
Friday, October 3, 2008
and that's the he and the she of it
Somehow I missed Rick Moody's choices on Ubuweb last month. Worth a listen, especially William Carlos William's reading Danse Russe ("I am lonely, lonely/I was born to be lonely/I am best so!").Thursday, October 2, 2008
to write
"To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write." Gertrude Stein.Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
5 things
I like about Cali Dewitt: He and Jenna in their bathrobes; how they always look like they're having fun and how their friends all have the best terrible haircuts; this t-shirt; how I kinda want, but am strangely reticent, to buy the blind bargain bag.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
the skins are naked
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
waiting for home
Home, by Marilynne Robinson. Excerpts from an interview with The Paris Review:
On character: In the development of every character there’s a kind of emotional entanglement that occurs. The characters that interest me are the ones that seem to pose questions in my own thinking. The minute that you start thinking about someone in the whole circumstance of his life to the extent that you can, he becomes mysterious, immediately.
On teaching: I try to make writers actually see what they have written, where the strength is. Usually in fiction there’s something that leaps out—an image or a moment that is strong enough to center the story. If they can see it, they can exploit it, enhance it, and build a fiction that is subtle and new. I don’t try to teach technique, because frankly most technical problems go away when a writer realizes where the life of a story lies. I don’t see any reason in fine-tuning something that’s essentially not going anywhere anyway. What they have to do first is interact in a serious way with what they’re putting on a page. When people are fully engaged with what they’re writing, a striking change occurs, a discipline of language and imagination.
On writing essays: To change my own mind. I try to create a new vocabulary or terrain for myself, so that I open out—I always think of the Dutch claiming land from the sea—or open up something that would have been closed to me before. That’s the point and the pleasure of it. I continuously scrutinize my own thinking. I write something and think, How do I know that that’s true? If I wrote what I thought I knew from the outset, then I wouldn’t be learning anything new.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
making pictures
Trudy White, who did the illustrations in The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, runs writing and visual art workshops for children and adults.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
feeding merlin
Friday, September 19, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
a collaboration with the world
"I trust my work. It's a collaboration with the material, and when it's viewed, it's a collaboration with the world." Kiki Smith.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
a blue quality
The Chicken Mask was sorrowful, Sis. The Chicken Mask was supposed to hustle business. It was supposed to invite the customer to gorge him or herself within our establishment. It was supposed to be endearing and funny. It was supposed to be an accurate representation of the featured item on our menu. But, Sis, in a practical setting, in test markets -- like right out in front of the restaurant -- the Chicken Mask had a plaintive aspect, a blue quality...Photo by Johanna Reed on Wheat Toast via Fortysixth at Grace.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
a dance to the music of time
"The pens are essentially props-they remind me that I’ve got to get back to writing, which means turning on the computer, and that’s a whole new world of distractions." David Coggins. Photo and post from A Continuous Lean.
Monday, September 15, 2008
what it is to be a human being
"Fiction's about what it is to be a human being." David Foster Wallace. AM Homes: "...it [Wallace's death] reminds us all of how fragile we are, and how close at hand the darkness is."
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
yes, I have friends
My friend Kenny came to visit last week. Check out his documentary about Bolivian women wrestlers here.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
four saints in three acts
The Lee Miller exhibit at SFMOMA is only up for a few more days. Photo of Lee Miller and Picasso from Art Tattler.
my criterions
I could spend all day on the Criterion site. Here are Kate and Laura Mulleavy's Top 10 Criterion picks. And Jane Campion's. Or howabout Jonathon Lethem's?




























































































