July 2011
51 posts
7 tags
“…certain writers produce Brooklyn Books of Wonder. Take mawkish...”
–
Come with us to a place called Brooklyn, where the stories are half-baked and their endings bland and soft, explored by Melvin Jules Bukiet in “Wonder Bread.”
6 tags
4 tags
“We want what is new and wonderful, not the strange and repellent thing that you...”
–
“Looking back over the last five hundred years, one may question whether the true creators of our civilization have ever needed…urging and coaching in order to become their remarkable selves and to make something really new.”
Jacques Barzun, “The Paradoxes of...
4 tags
In The American Scholar’s “Purpose-Driven Life,” Brian Boyd finds that evolution does not rob life of meaning, but creates meaning. It also makes possible for our own capacity for creativity.
4 tags
Mother and Father Reunion →
Summer House Books →
3 tags
“Mother, I want to be in the place where I was with you and you smelled so...”
– Taken from Mary Gordon’s “My Mother’s Body,” The American Scholar
5 tags
James as Jilter
“It was the jilting that drew him— jilting as flight, a thing James knew well. Putting an ocean behind him, he had jilted America…. Convivial as he was, sympathetic as he might be, his public life was a series of subtly executed relinquishments and escapes— from attachments unwanted, from ministrations imposed (as when he angrily discovered that the best-selling Edith...
4 tags
An excerpt from Gretel Ehrlich’s 1998 Journal, writen in Santa Rosa:
Let’s keep going, I say to him. Let’s make this boat go down the coast of Mexico. His eyes brighten. Good idea. Because mi corazon es muy malo, I tell him. Ben, my friend and lover, has left me.
Journal: Santa Rosa Island, 1998, The American Scholar (Autumn 2001)
4 tags
“We are not a people formed in freedom. Freedom is always a call to possibility...”
– Shelby Steele, “Being Black and Feeling Blue,” The American Scholar (Autumn 1989)
8 tags
“A Balinese village or palace court or temple has something of the quality of a...”
– Margaret Mead, “Community Drama, Bali and America,” The American Scholar, Winter 1941-42
3 tags
4 tags
7 tags
On the Trail of Sublime →
5 tags
Red Pens & Rothko
Did you know…
According to tests performed by California State University, subjects using a red pen completed word stem exercises with more words pertaining to failure or poor performance, marked more errors in essays, and assigned lower overall grades to essays as opposed to those who used blue pens.
This is just one of the interesting effects...
2 tags
“Without you there would be no sin, no sex, no history, no temptation, no chance for immortality.”
Poet David Lehman discusses his favorite word in The American Scholar’s ”Why I Love You.”
3 tags
8 tags
“The great directors, from D.W. Griffith to Alfred Hitchcock, have never lost...”
– Mark Van Doren, “Let the Movies Be Natural,” The American Scholar, Autumn 1937
Fear of Falling: An undergraduate WW II era memoir from James McConkey http://ow.ly/5Bux4
6 tags
5 tags
Fiction from Lily Tuck- The House at Belle Fontaine http://ow.ly/5BukR
4 tags
Teaching the N-Word
He does not want to say it because he is white; he does not want to say it because I am black. I feel my power as his professor, the mentor he has so ardently adopted. I feel the power of Randall Kennedy’s book in my hands, its title crude and unambiguous. Say it, we both instruct this white student. And he does.
Emily Bernard, “Teaching the...
Lady of the Lake- Writer Brenda Ueland and the story she never shared by Alice Kaplan http://ow.ly/5BuaF
8 tags
“As millions of people had discovered before me, e-mail was fast....”
– “Philonoe” (Editor Anne Fadiman), “Mail,” The American Scholar, Winter 2000
RT @TheAtlantic: Scenes from South Sudan’s debut on the world stage http://su.pr/2pqLTG Fantastic photos from @In_Focus
7 tags
“Attacks against science are likely to become more bitter and more widespread in...”
– Freeman J Dyson, “Science in Trouble,” The American Scholar, Autumn 1993
Amazing finish!! Way to go #USMNT
Four poems by Louise Gluck http://ow.ly/5yfei
Unexpected Visitors →
Words to wake your readers up with. Zinsser on Friday. Have a great weekend everyone. http://t.co/ljjzSLD #browsings
2 tags
4 tags
The Torture Colony
“You will get the uneasyfeeling of crossing into some sort of twilight zone,” he had said. “You will see the way they dress, their haircuts. It’s like going back in time to Germany in the 1940s. Even though it is easier to talk to the colonos than it was a few years ago, things are still a long way from being ‘normal.’ Most of them are still quite afraid of speaking openly.”
...
4 tags
"Ivy Retardation"
“Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.”
...
9 tags
“Whether in music or architecture, literature, painting, or sculpture, are opens...”
– Barbara W. Tuchman, “Mankind’s Better Moments,” The American Scholar, Autumn 1980
RT @ussoccer_wnt: The #USWNT will face Brazil in the quarterfinals on Sunday. Coverage on ESPN and ESPN3.com starts at 11 a.m. ET with k …
7 tags
4 tags
4 tags
7 tags
RT @SandraBeasley: Sad to hear Cy Twombly died. Here’s a great profile of his work at the Louvre, which we ran in my days at TAS http:// …
7 tags
“In 1946 we comfortably supposed that Orwell was talking about other...”
– Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “Politics and the American Language,” The American Scholar, Autumn 1974
Two girls true and false. All Points with William Deresiewicz http://t.co/6QJT3vb
Two Girls, True and False →
6 tags
“The boss nowadays does not have to be an expert himself; in the normal course of...”
– Alfred Kazin, “The President and Other Intellectuals,” The American Scholar, Autumn 1961
How to Get to Our House →
Welcome to the 4th of July weekend and good luck finding our summer cottage. Zinsser on Friday. http://t.co/VZm79rZ
Revisiting the gritty Roman neighborhood of his youth, a writer discovers a world of his own invention. http://ow.ly/5rmcf
