September 2012
70 posts
“Liquor, in my parents’ world, was always your reward at the end of a hard day—or an easy day, for that matter—and I like to observe that old family tradition.”
—James Merrill (via theparisreview)
“In the first place, it is true that I turned 40 this year, and it is equally true that, for the 40th time, my writing did not make it into the New Yorker’s “Forty Under Forty” issue, or Granta’s “Forty Under Forty” issue, or the LA Times’s “Forty Faces Under Forty” issue, or the Guardian’s annual “Forty American Writers Under Forty to Watch”, or even McSweeney’s “Forty Writers Under Forty Who Live Near Us in Brooklyn and We Hang Out With Quite a Bit or At Least Would Like To”.”
—From Shalom Auslander’s wonderful essay “Shalom Auslander on the Tyranny of Literary Talent Spotting” at the Guardian, where he discusses judging a “Three Under Three” contest. (via largeheartedboy)
You know what? Sometimes it gets exhausting reading glowing reviews for books that aren’t that good.
“”There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest for something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidarity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.”
—
E.B. White (via ohchelsealove)
What about the 4th New York, where it just seems, to outsiders, kinda annoying and full of itself?
When I think a really long reading is over but then someone says, "And now time for Q&A"
or, way worse… “(breath)(drink of water) Part two…” (or, “Here’s one more poem/story…”)
“Like religion, the game of baseball is founded on aspirations rarely met.”
—
Joe Girardi and Trying Times for the Yankees : The New Yorker
Gay Talese on Joe Girardi, on baseball.
