middle cyclones and other references

"He slept that night in his own country and he had a dream wherein he saw God's pilgrims laboring upon a darkened verge in the last of the twilight of that day and they seemed to be returning from some deep enterprise that was not of war nor were they yet in flight but rather seemed coming from some labor to which perhaps these and all other things stood subjugate."
The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy


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What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-f—king-American, is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Gov. Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion.
Stephen King scolds the superrich (including himself—and Mitt Romney) for not giving back, and warns of a Kingsian apocalyptic scenario if inequality is not addressed in America. Stephen King FTW! (via cheatsheet)

(via newsweek)

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fromageetalpinisme: “If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” E. B. White, 1976

fromageetalpinisme:

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

E. B. White, 1976

(via womansoheartless)

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John Irving’s 10 Favorite Books

libraryland:

  1. “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens
  2. “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” by Thomas Hardy
  3. “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  4. “The Mayor of Casterbridge” by Thomas Hardy
  5. “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens
  6. “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert
  7. “The Fifth Business” by Robertson Davies
  8. “The Tin Drum” by Gunther Grass
  9. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  10. “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville

(from The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books)

I don’t know how to tell you this, John Irving, but…….we know. We really know. Anyone who’s read anything you’ve written - we know. We love you for it, but…..again, we definitely know what your favorite books are. 

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walkwhilereading: Annotated Copy of Underworld by Don DeLillo. “David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo corresponded frequently about their writing and their struggles when they were both working on complex and lenghty novels. DeLillo’s Underworld (1997) and Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996). They also shared pre-published drafts of the novels with each other. Displayed here is one fo the three bound voumes of Wallace’s heavily annotated copy of Don DeLillo’s draft of Underworld. [link]

walkwhilereading:

Annotated Copy of Underworld by Don DeLillo.

“David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo corresponded frequently about their writing and their struggles when they were both working on complex and lenghty novels. DeLillo’s Underworld (1997) and Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996). They also shared pre-published drafts of the novels with each other. Displayed here is one fo the three bound voumes of Wallace’s heavily annotated copy of Don DeLillo’s draft of Underworld. [link]

(via libraryland)

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apoetreflects: “Writing is a deeper sleep than death.  Just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from its grave, I can’t be dragged from my desk at night.” —Franz Kafka

apoetreflects:

“Writing is a deeper sleep than death.  Just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from its grave, I can’t be dragged from my desk at night.”

—Franz Kafka

(via libraryland)

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bbook:

Listen to Dearly Departed Authors Read Their Work

Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Nabokov, Tolkien, Faulkner, and, of course, DFW. And T.S. Eliot reading The Wasteland. 

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nevver: Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

nevver:

Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck

  1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
  2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
  3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
  4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
  5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
  6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
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nevver: Camus

nevver:

Camus

(via bbook)

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laughingsquid: An Interview with William Gibson

laughingsquid:

An Interview with William Gibson

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When Dostoevsky met Dickens in 1862 — a meeting that is hard to imagine — Dickens explained that there were two people inside him, ‘one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite.’ […] Out of these two people he constructed his universe of characters, good and evil. Dostoevsky’s comment is laconic and ambiguous. ‘Only two people?’ he asked.
Verlyn Klinkenborg, “The Whirling Sound of Planet Dickens” (via fwriction)

(via laphamsquarterly)

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(via theatlantic:flavorpill) TV characters and their literary counterparts 

(via theatlantic:flavorpill)

TV characters and their literary counterparts 

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I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.
Angela Carter, “Black Venus”
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murmurandshout: Happy birthday, you glorious genius and all-around decent human being, you! (photo by Kimberly Butler) Of course your birthday is two days after the Boyfriend’s. I picked good.

murmurandshout:

Happy birthday, you glorious genius and all-around decent human being, you!

(photo by Kimberly Butler)

Of course your birthday is two days after the Boyfriend’s. I picked good.

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The entrancement of film is that the reading protocols are invisible. You give yourself to a film, ideally, in a gigantic darkened auditorium: and it washes over you. It makes its own reality inevitable. And you don’t have to ever think about your efforts in reading or constructing it. You can’t slow or speed up that experience (I mean, now technically you can, but you don’t want to, you want to succumb). It masters you totally.


The seduction of a comic is secretly the exact opposite. People don’t think about it, but you learn to read a comic book. It’s a very complicated reading protocol. A very active one. It’s like you’re in a damp world and you have to keep striking matches to light it up. You’re constantly working to decide—do I read the words in the panel, do I read the word in the box at the top, do I look at the picture, do I skip ahead and look at where the pictures are going to go later on, do I do it fast, do I do it slow, do I read every word, do I mainly see it? What am I doing here? You’re always deciding how to make the narrative come alive. It’s actually a much more complicated form of reading than reading text! Because you’re making these switches from the visual to the verbal. So one is a completely globally active reading protocol, and the other is this sublime, passive dreamlike surrender. And I don’t think you can ever get from one to the other. They’re almost opposite ends of the aesthetic experience.

Writer Jonathan Lethem on why he loves meta-nonfiction — and hates superhero flicks. Read more. (via theatlantic)

I don’t agree with the ultimate argument here (which is silly on its face), but I do like Lethem’s descriptions of each experience.

(via murmurandshout)

(via murmurandshout)

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I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. My particular combo of slack features, negligible affect, and soulless gaze had helped my game ever since I started playing 20 years ago, when I was ignorant of pot odds and M-theory and three-betting, and it gave me a boost as I collected my trove of lore, game by game, hand by hand. It had not helped me human relationships-wise over the years, but surely I am not alone here — anyone whose peculiar mix of genetic material and formative experiences had resulted in a near-expressionless mask could relate. Nature giveth, taketh, etc. You make the best of the hand you’re dealt.

Colson Whitehead’s ongoing series from the World Series of Poker: Parts 1-4 - Grantland

The article is called “Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia”. In other words, marry me, Colson Whitehead. 

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