On the way to work today I had been mulling over a post on the difference between progressive politics and ideas about ‘progressive’ art. I was thinking, as I often do, that these are very different things. When I got to work I let my post drift off and set about moving 140 feet of [...]
I’ve added two new links today. One is to Obooko, an English website dedicated to the free distribution of e-books. They contacted me about posting The Man Who Can’t Die there, Which I Have Done.
The other is personal. At my friend Bob’s 50th birthday in Brooklyn last weekend (a bash not to be forgotten, at [...]
perhaps its a cylon probe but some entity has been looking at my 3 Berry Place, Darwin, Australia, 1983 post. If you are indeed human, and know anything of 3 Berry Place, Darwin, Australia in 1983, please reveal yourself…i too am of the tribe of humans. there are few of us left, perhaps only 2 [...]
I try to be holistic in my thinking, but it is impossible not to feel that I have a poet brain and a prose brain. There is a lot of counterpoint between them. When I am writing fiction my own poetry seems alien. I either don’t like it, or don’t know how I wrote it. [...]
Anne Edsall, 1962-2010
A short note for those who knew her, who were around. There’s a ‘friends of Anne’ Facebook group for anyone who wishes to reminisce. It just makes me terribly sad that she is gone. Anne was someone I knew from the late seventies to the early eighties. I haven’t seen her since. She [...]
FIRE
A Brief History
By Stephen J. Pyne
University of Washington Press, 2001
“According to many myths, we became truly human only when we acquired fire. So it is natural to assume a parallel awakening for the place we live. Rather, the Earth likely simmered through more than four billion years before its biotic broth boiled over.”
So begins chapter [...]
There was a discussion yesterday at Ward Six about Elmore Leonard. John was saying that he loved Leonard’s dialogue, and then someone posted a link to Leonard’s rules for writing, published some years back in the Times. The rules are simple and indisputable, as far as they go, and they have the limitations of any [...]
My dear and generous friend Miette has done a wonderful thing for me, she is going to begin podcasting The Man Who Can’t Die today, here: http://themanwhocantdie.com/
Miette has a wonderful podcast. She reads, sometimes from the bathtub, an eclectic slew of matter that staggers me with its breadth. She is also a great writer and [...]
I WANT TO LIVE!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22angi.html
I have for many years loved the writing of Natalie Angier, and this article is no exception. But aside from her ferociously delicious vocabulary and the slightly bent perspective she brings to her subject (bent in the sexual sense!), both of which i savour in this story, I post this because it [...]
contact: jon@lastbender.com