I’ve endured a few knocks but missed worse. I know how lucky I am, and secretly tap wood, greet the day, and grab a sneaky pleasure from my survival at long odds. The pains and insults are bearable. My conversation may be full of holes and pauses, but I’ve learned to dispatch a private Apache scout ahead into the next sentence, the one coming up, to see if there are any vacant names or verbs in the landscape up there. If he sends back a warning, I’ll pause meaningfully, duh, until something else comes to mind.i'm scaling back on crying at my desk on my lunch break and won't unpack why angell undoes me, but i do suggest clasping his essay to you before going underground.
On the other hand, I’ve not yet forgotten Keats or Dick Cheney or what’s waiting for me at the dry cleaner’s today. As of right now, I’m not Christopher Hitchens or Tony Judt or Nora Ephron; I’m not dead and not yet mindless in a reliable upstate facility. Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice—they’re sad and shocked but also a little pissed off to be here—to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. It must be this hovering knowledge, that two-ton safe swaying on a frayed rope just over my head, that makes everyone so glad to see me again. “How great you’re looking! Wow, tell me your secret!” they kindly cry when they happen upon me crossing the street or exiting a dinghy or departing an X-ray room, while the little balloon over their heads reads, “Holy shit—he’s still vertical!”
Let’s move on. A smooth fox terrier of ours named Harry was full of surprises. Wildly sociable, like others of his breed, he grew a fraction more reserved in maturity, and learned to cultivate a separate wagging acquaintance with each fresh visitor or old pal he came upon in the living room. If friends had come for dinner, he’d arise from an evening nap and leisurely tour the table in imitation of a three-star headwaiter: Everything O.K. here? Is there anything we could bring you? How was the crème brûlée? Terriers aren’t water dogs, but Harry enjoyed kayaking in Maine, sitting like a figurehead between my knees for an hour or more and scoping out the passing cormorant or yachtsman. Back in the city, he established his personality and dashing good looks on the neighborhood to the extent that a local artist executed a striking head-on portrait in pointillist oils, based on a snapshot of him she’d sneaked in Central Park. Harry took his leave (another surprise) on a June afternoon three years ago, a few days after his eighth birthday. Alone in our fifth-floor apartment, as was usual during working hours, he became unhinged by a noisy thunderstorm and went out a front window left a quarter open on a muggy day. I knew him well and could summon up his feelings during the brief moments of that leap: the welcome coolness of rain on his muzzle and shoulders, the excitement of air and space around his outstretched body.
02.28.14
i'm half a subway commute, maybe fifteen minutes, into roger angell's "this old man" (a new yorker piece from a few weeks ago on life at 93). it's already the best thing i've read this year, what peter hay might have called "a charm against the jackals."
02.19.14
i sing of northern california, where blanket coats lie dreaming in under-bed storage and the locals apologize for 60-degree evenings! i was inconsolable when what many called the prettiest snowstorm of the season hit new york city just as i made my first trip across the fog-swaddled new bay bridge (predictably, i prefer the clunky old bay bridge - this latest tech boom can suck it). nearly inconsolable, really, as it's hard to fixate on the weather when one's little sister is about to bring one's niece into the world. it's terrible to have to concede that a little sister has had sex, but it's wonderful to help throw a shower for her and her baby.
i sing of adolescence that echoes down through the decades! i turned into a snarling teenager on friday after my mother and i blew our last chance to gather shower supplies at the san francisco flower mart and i had to scavenge for arrangement components in the mylar wasteland that is sacramento-area grocery stores on valentine's day (when whole foods said they'd have "plenty of flowers," they meant they'd have "plenty of pre-arranged roses"). i knew even as i sniped that i was being cruel, but i couldn't hide how bitter i was that she didn't know what i needed. a few days later we wept in each other's arms on the curb at the airport, and i asked her to forgive me for moving so far away. it's been a week of strange demonstrations.
i sing of things we can't know. my sister's baby is tiny, and though her doctors' tests haven't revealed anything sinister, they can't reassure us that the little one will be alright in there until her due date next month; if today's sonogram indicates that she's slipped into the fifth percentile for weight, they will take her out this weekend. little one, you don't have to see the blooms i brought for your mother. i want them long dead by the time you come to us.
we climbed the hill to grace cathedral on thursday afternoon and walked beneath anne patterson's 'graced with light,' an installation of nearly 20 miles of ribbon that "carry our prayers, dreams and wishes skyward, and, in turn, grace streams down the ribbons to us." i watched rainbows creep across the indoor labyrinth and wondered what it would mean if i lit a candle in the chapel. i decided to fill my sister's house with flowers.
02.05.14
I'd practise translation so much that I could say many things, at least the sort of things that typically I'd say in my own language. Comprehension, however, was another thing altogether. After I'd presented my own carefully displayed sentence like a diamond necklace on black velvet, the other speaker, the French person, would throw his sentence at me like a handful of wet sand. It would sting so badly that I'd wince, and an instant later I would wonder what had just happened to me.
[...]
At Marie-Claude's dinners no one spoke in any predictable way. They were all intellectuals and writers who I learned had to show how ironic they could be, how droll, how quickly and easily they could anticipate every objection their interlocutors might make. The advancement of a simple idea or piece of information was not the object. The task was to show they were civilized beings who caught every allusion. They were capable of enclosing linguistic brackets inside conversational parentheses.
Moreover, they interrupted constantly which, it amazed me to learn, was not considered rude in Paris. Madame de Staël in her book about Germany had written that German was not a proper language for intelligent conversation since you had to wait till the end of the sentence to hear the verb and couldn't interrupt.
(edmund white, from "american vogue," granta 126)
02.04.14
Hay was a genuine polymath, well before his time in the easy way in which he could slip and slide between subjects; his curiosity was sincere and led him down green alleys and into largely unexplored spaces, though this was a trait that did him no favours with commercial art galleries trapped in the over-simplification of genres. He was a Dissenter in the Blake tradition, a visionary who believed in the power of art to combat the sacrilege of developers and planners and all who lay waste to the places people value most: "Ultimately, all I want to do is to make something of beauty and pleasure as a charm against the jackals."
(from adam stout and annabel eatherley's obituary for peter hay in the independent, 09.05.03)
02.03.14
there was a fire at the delancey street station this morning, so i walked through chinatown to catch another train. i could make like the crowds and slush and rolling into the office looking like alice cooper were terrible, but who am i kidding? this weather is fantastic.
01.30.14
in recent news of things i've set on fire, i can report that erin's* instant citrus votive project works and is amazing; i can now work my way through the huge bottle of canola oil i once bought to make a red velvet cake or something, and i have an ongoing excuse to buy handfuls of the satsumas and mandarins everyone else ignores in the office cafeteria. my one addendum to her instructions would be the observation that i probably should have extinguished the flame when the oil first ran out and the wick started to sizzle; instead i let the peel catch on fire (o pungent conclusion!). a capital trick, this.
*not to be confused with erin of the marvelous wildlife rehabilitation. quite nice to have multiple helpful erins about, i must say.
01.24.14
i spent the last afternoon of the year in central park with my father and my youngest sister. the polar vortex had yet to drape itself across the city, but the creeping post-solstice cold dragged its nails up my back anyway. we spoke of endings and beginnings, of professional decisions and unprofessional joys; i would publish in 2014, i said, because i figured it was what i was supposed to say, and publishing is such a fine thing.
my thoughts are all of beasts, is the problem. i began the new year on fire to volunteer at the bronx zoo; in collecting photos for ye olde birthday cakes for animals project i've tumbled through umpteen images of animal enrichment, and i thought i'd be just the gal to make ungulate-shaped piñatas for tigers. predictably enough, the zoo is less interested in enthusiastic amateur papier-mâché artists than it is in potential docents, and i was at a dead end until erin told me about her work with wild animals on long island. a group in the city needed help as well, she said. i could train to be a wildlife rehabilitator, maybe.
wildlife, internets! not mewling kittens begging to be smuggled into my apartment, but a fierce little robin that screeches like a boar, somersaulting red bats, and pigeons, dozens of pigeons in a tiny underground treatment space nursing bite wounds and necrotic toes and frost-abraded wings until CAGE REST is scratched from their charts and they can whirl back into the air. each sunday i spend with them erodes some of the staggering powerlessness i felt when i tried to make myself useful at animal control two years ago; they're happiest when you let them go. i think 2014 is their year.
my thoughts are all of beasts, is the problem. i began the new year on fire to volunteer at the bronx zoo; in collecting photos for ye olde birthday cakes for animals project i've tumbled through umpteen images of animal enrichment, and i thought i'd be just the gal to make ungulate-shaped piñatas for tigers. predictably enough, the zoo is less interested in enthusiastic amateur papier-mâché artists than it is in potential docents, and i was at a dead end until erin told me about her work with wild animals on long island. a group in the city needed help as well, she said. i could train to be a wildlife rehabilitator, maybe.
wildlife, internets! not mewling kittens begging to be smuggled into my apartment, but a fierce little robin that screeches like a boar, somersaulting red bats, and pigeons, dozens of pigeons in a tiny underground treatment space nursing bite wounds and necrotic toes and frost-abraded wings until CAGE REST is scratched from their charts and they can whirl back into the air. each sunday i spend with them erodes some of the staggering powerlessness i felt when i tried to make myself useful at animal control two years ago; they're happiest when you let them go. i think 2014 is their year.
01.09.14
ask kidchamp, round V {vegan feet, fire-eating, and men in dresses; previous installment here}
are there vegan shoes (dress shoes in particular) that don't feel like your feet are steaming in their own personal sauna?
A: if you ever become interested in womenswear (see below), i strongly recommend stella mccartney; she's been turning out some of the most user-friendly (in terms of both comfort and one's ability to roll into a high-stakes fashion situation) vegan accessories in town for years, and they turn up on ebay in good shape at reasonable prices. in the interim, keep your eyes peeled for olsenhaus, a brand that patrols the non-PVC (PVC is environmentally brutal and uncompromising re: perspiration, as you probably know) shadowlands between ultra-haute vegan stuff and, like, hemp slip-ons. for men, i like the time travelers, which are a handsome coated cotton. for myself, i have and love a pair of sandals from a few seasons ago, and i'm eyeing the babylon ballet flats, which are made of microfiber derived from recycled television screens and have soles made of recycled rubber and sawdust. (olsenhaus shoes are often steeply discounted online.) give the novacas men's collection a look, as well; the vegan internets have long spoken highly of their boots in re: foot angst.
what was a time you responded inappropriately to a serious question?
A: at some point late in the magical year i worked in public relations, my coworkers and i gathered around a conference-room table to eat chopped salads and exchange seasonal pleasantries and mildly-revealing personal information. someone asked everyone else to describe what they would be doing with their lives if they hadn't gone into PR, and i said that i quite liked the idea of being a pyrotechnician. we all studied our salads.
have you ever thrown your cats a party? top five ever mag freebies? most and least pricey fashiony purchases of all time?
A: i have never thrown my cats a party, though i have probably thrown a party with the secondary or tertiary goal of debuting a cat. a coworker of mine recently lost a dog and threw a party for her surviving dog because she didn't want him to feel alone, which broke my heart and doubled my respect for her.
my top five ever magazine-editor freebies are a complicated vacuum, a mysterious black wool sample dress that was never produced for the market, a massive iittala aalto vase, a bottle of decennial's bois bourbon eau de toilette, and a bottle of 18-year-old highland park (honorable mention goes to 5,321 scented candles, 763 blankets, and a bunch of workout gear that makes me look like an eastern european ice dancer).
my least pricey fashiony purchase of all time is probably a pair of gold spike earrings i found online for $3 a few years ago; my priciest, in turn, is the navy blue wool chloé coat i bought at a consignment store two weeks ago. it makes me feel like a tolstoy heroine and cost far less than it might have, but i still needed lisa to sherpa me through the decision via text. (lisa, i salute you.)
or are these to be general? ie, how do i make coffee that isn't terrible?, what is the training for fire-eating?, etc
A: i like all questions. as a former surly coffee pro (i miss you sometimes, facial piercing), i am of the belief that if one is unable or unwilling to purchase a straight-up coffeehouse-caliber espresso machine—the elephantine, horrifically expensive kind that would kill you if it fell on you—one should skip amateur espresso drinks and focus on a kick-ass cup of pressed coffee. per the folks at roasting plant, our local devastatingly-high-quality coffee place, a french press maximizes the contact between your beans and your hot water. simple, no? they are also not a pain in the ass to clean, which makes them far more attractive to me than more intricate coffee gadgets. if you insist on making complicated stuff like mochas, mix your chocolate and your milk together before you steam them, as my first coffee-boss taught me.
the training for fire-eating is amateur fire-eating, of course. you'll need sambuca (romana is fairly easy to find), a champagne flute, and a book of matches. pour a shot of sambuca into the flute, swirl it around to kick up some fumes, and light the surface with a match; douse the flame immediately by putting your hand flat across the top of the flute (the vacuum you create will make the flute stick). have an assistant stand by with a book of matches, pour the sambuca into your mouth, tilt your head back, and have said assistant light it with a match; let the resultant flame frighten your friends and neighbors for a second, then close your mouth to put it out, wait a second to be sure, and swallow. (you can do the lighting yourself, but i wouldn't recommend that unless you're especially experienced, especially foolhardy, or both.) my point is that eating fire is extinguishing fire, really (the first rule of fire-eating is, predictably, never, ever breathe in, which is why the flaming sambuca is good practice; the second is don't eat fire when it's windy). the main two extinguishes are closing your mouth around the fire to deprive it of oxygen and blowing quickly outward with a puff (preferable if your torch is too hot to touch with your mouth). the third is that you should be very careful when making a torch, of course; DIY at your own risk (torch components can be found among fire equipment from a juggling store; personally i am quite taken with the wicked fire fans, which are, alas, inedible). the internet will try to tell you that fire-eating necessitates a tiny top hat, but that's between you and your supervising deity of choice, i think.
Late Entry: Contra past comments, has any sex-related art ever... ahem... seduced you into a notable state of appreciation?
A: i'm both a little unclear on what you're asking and fairly sure the answer would be no regardless? that said, i still remember where i was when i saw brad pitt's all-minidress rolling stone feature circa fight club, and sweet christ. for legends-of-the-fall-brad-pitt fans it was dylan going electric; for me it was, well, dylan going electric.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 after unsuccessfully haggling with the (kind of mean) consignment store folks for my coat, i took it home and discovered a pair of fur-trimmed gloves that had been wrapped with it by mistake. what should i have done with them?
02 do you think my coworker's dog felt better?
03 where and when did you have the best cup of coffee of your life?
04 have you ever eaten fire? would you?
05 what do you think of brad pitt in a dress?
are there vegan shoes (dress shoes in particular) that don't feel like your feet are steaming in their own personal sauna?
A: if you ever become interested in womenswear (see below), i strongly recommend stella mccartney; she's been turning out some of the most user-friendly (in terms of both comfort and one's ability to roll into a high-stakes fashion situation) vegan accessories in town for years, and they turn up on ebay in good shape at reasonable prices. in the interim, keep your eyes peeled for olsenhaus, a brand that patrols the non-PVC (PVC is environmentally brutal and uncompromising re: perspiration, as you probably know) shadowlands between ultra-haute vegan stuff and, like, hemp slip-ons. for men, i like the time travelers, which are a handsome coated cotton. for myself, i have and love a pair of sandals from a few seasons ago, and i'm eyeing the babylon ballet flats, which are made of microfiber derived from recycled television screens and have soles made of recycled rubber and sawdust. (olsenhaus shoes are often steeply discounted online.) give the novacas men's collection a look, as well; the vegan internets have long spoken highly of their boots in re: foot angst.
what was a time you responded inappropriately to a serious question?
A: at some point late in the magical year i worked in public relations, my coworkers and i gathered around a conference-room table to eat chopped salads and exchange seasonal pleasantries and mildly-revealing personal information. someone asked everyone else to describe what they would be doing with their lives if they hadn't gone into PR, and i said that i quite liked the idea of being a pyrotechnician. we all studied our salads.
have you ever thrown your cats a party? top five ever mag freebies? most and least pricey fashiony purchases of all time?
A: i have never thrown my cats a party, though i have probably thrown a party with the secondary or tertiary goal of debuting a cat. a coworker of mine recently lost a dog and threw a party for her surviving dog because she didn't want him to feel alone, which broke my heart and doubled my respect for her.
my top five ever magazine-editor freebies are a complicated vacuum, a mysterious black wool sample dress that was never produced for the market, a massive iittala aalto vase, a bottle of decennial's bois bourbon eau de toilette, and a bottle of 18-year-old highland park (honorable mention goes to 5,321 scented candles, 763 blankets, and a bunch of workout gear that makes me look like an eastern european ice dancer).
my least pricey fashiony purchase of all time is probably a pair of gold spike earrings i found online for $3 a few years ago; my priciest, in turn, is the navy blue wool chloé coat i bought at a consignment store two weeks ago. it makes me feel like a tolstoy heroine and cost far less than it might have, but i still needed lisa to sherpa me through the decision via text. (lisa, i salute you.)
or are these to be general? ie, how do i make coffee that isn't terrible?, what is the training for fire-eating?, etc
A: i like all questions. as a former surly coffee pro (i miss you sometimes, facial piercing), i am of the belief that if one is unable or unwilling to purchase a straight-up coffeehouse-caliber espresso machine—the elephantine, horrifically expensive kind that would kill you if it fell on you—one should skip amateur espresso drinks and focus on a kick-ass cup of pressed coffee. per the folks at roasting plant, our local devastatingly-high-quality coffee place, a french press maximizes the contact between your beans and your hot water. simple, no? they are also not a pain in the ass to clean, which makes them far more attractive to me than more intricate coffee gadgets. if you insist on making complicated stuff like mochas, mix your chocolate and your milk together before you steam them, as my first coffee-boss taught me.
the training for fire-eating is amateur fire-eating, of course. you'll need sambuca (romana is fairly easy to find), a champagne flute, and a book of matches. pour a shot of sambuca into the flute, swirl it around to kick up some fumes, and light the surface with a match; douse the flame immediately by putting your hand flat across the top of the flute (the vacuum you create will make the flute stick). have an assistant stand by with a book of matches, pour the sambuca into your mouth, tilt your head back, and have said assistant light it with a match; let the resultant flame frighten your friends and neighbors for a second, then close your mouth to put it out, wait a second to be sure, and swallow. (you can do the lighting yourself, but i wouldn't recommend that unless you're especially experienced, especially foolhardy, or both.) my point is that eating fire is extinguishing fire, really (the first rule of fire-eating is, predictably, never, ever breathe in, which is why the flaming sambuca is good practice; the second is don't eat fire when it's windy). the main two extinguishes are closing your mouth around the fire to deprive it of oxygen and blowing quickly outward with a puff (preferable if your torch is too hot to touch with your mouth). the third is that you should be very careful when making a torch, of course; DIY at your own risk (torch components can be found among fire equipment from a juggling store; personally i am quite taken with the wicked fire fans, which are, alas, inedible). the internet will try to tell you that fire-eating necessitates a tiny top hat, but that's between you and your supervising deity of choice, i think.
Late Entry: Contra past comments, has any sex-related art ever... ahem... seduced you into a notable state of appreciation?
A: i'm both a little unclear on what you're asking and fairly sure the answer would be no regardless? that said, i still remember where i was when i saw brad pitt's all-minidress rolling stone feature circa fight club, and sweet christ. for legends-of-the-fall-brad-pitt fans it was dylan going electric; for me it was, well, dylan going electric.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 after unsuccessfully haggling with the (kind of mean) consignment store folks for my coat, i took it home and discovered a pair of fur-trimmed gloves that had been wrapped with it by mistake. what should i have done with them?
02 do you think my coworker's dog felt better?
03 where and when did you have the best cup of coffee of your life?
04 have you ever eaten fire? would you?
05 what do you think of brad pitt in a dress?
01.03.14
A long time ago—so long ago he had forgotten the author's name—he read some memorable lines in a story about a man who is trying to translate another story, by a much more famous author. In these lines—which, my neighbor said, he still remembers to this day—the translator says that a sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal. Those lines concerned the art of writing, but looking around himself in early middle-age my neighbor began to see that they applied just as much to the art of living.
(rachel cusk, from "outline: part 1," the paris review winter 2013)
If you exist for a long enough time on the Internet, you’ll lead lots of different lives there. You’ll become known first for one thing, and then, if you’re lucky, another. Creative life on the Internet is long, and made up of a bunch of bright intense bursts. Eyeballs all turn your way at once, and then they turn away. This all may add up to a certain kind of fame, but I think a better way of looking at it is that you just become part of the Internet’s furniture. People sit on you, people lie down on you and cry, people let their dogs put muddy paws all over you, people forget you in favor of another couch, people discover you again.
Don’t ask me to push this furniture metaphor too far or things…will get…insane.
(patricia lockwood, from lauren o'neal's interview at therumpus.net)
12.26.13ii
31 BOOKS I READ THIS YEAR, IN ORDER OF HOW INTERESTED I WAS IN SLEEPING WITH THEM BENEATH MY PILLOW (STRONGEST CANDIDATES FIRST), AND HAIKU DISCUSSION
01 magic for beginners (kelly link). i'd concuss myself / for the chance to discover / kelly link again.
02 atonement (ian mcewan). adolescence in / a rotten nutshell, rendered / with ageless sympathy.
03 sweet tooth (ian mcewan). spies on fiction, and / fiction on spies; atonement, / but so much more fun.
04 stranger things happen (kelly link). the hat story is / amazing, but i can't talk / about it. (terror.)
05 great plains (ian frazier). apprenticeships for / nonfiction aren't a thing, but / i'd be frazier's serf.
06 joseph anton (salman rushdie). a singular tale / of bravery for art's sake. / fuck yeah, publishing.
07 antarctica (gabrielle walker). with pym, this nonfic's / an overturned cooler of / polar-pure goodness.
08 pym (mat johnson). sometimes i wake up / and pad out to the shelf to / reread the best jokes.
09 boy, snow, bird (helen oyeyemi). snow white recast as / mothers, daughters, and sisters. / modern, clever magic.
10 every love story is a ghost story: a life of david foster wallace (d.t. max). a thoughtful bio; / predictably, made me miss / wallace even more.
11 beautiful ruins (jess walter). starlets, italians, / and the people who love them. / patchy but winning.
12 the dog stars (peter heller). apocalypse sans / j-law, plus a little plane / and a man-eater.
13 an equal music (vikram seth). better than dancing / about architecture. a / bit twee, but good twee.
14 the diviners (libba bray). more is more: psychic / flapper teens with ESP! / just let it happen.
15 amsterdam (ian mcewan). booker prize winner? / seriously? mcewan, / i expected more.
16 vengeance (benjamin black). john banville's crime books / lack some of their pulp lately; / i'll still drink to them.
17 my life (isadora duncan). craziest tunic- / wearer since cassandra; i / admire and fear her.
18 see a little light (bob mould). karmic opposite of / dean "scrooge" wareham's black postcards. / nice guy finished first.
19 the twelve (justin cronin). book 2, HIGHBROW BLOOD: / THE DICKENSING. honestly, / vampire methadone.
20 the starboard sea (amber dermont). probably i should / stop reading novels about / prep schools. most are MEH.
21 world war z (max brooks). zombie invasion / seen through a mosquito's eye: / i was entertained.
22 lost at sea (jon ronson). great subject choices, / less-than-diligent research. / funny, frustrating.
23 babayaga (toby barlow). are spies a match for / wicked old-country song-spells? / witch, please. (also fleas.)
24 how did you get this number (sloane crosley). i like crosley, but / this collection needs edits / and fewer bear deaths.
25 why we broke up (daniel handler and maira kalman). a sweet theme grows / cloying with repetition. / these teens don't charm me.
26 changing places (david lodge). dear me at nineteen: / we still think david lodge sucks. / regards, ancient me.
27 outrage (arnaldur indridason). clunky crime patter, / but good info on using / tandoori spices.
28 the psychopath test (jon ronson). i have a vein near / my eye that throbs when facts die. / it's python-sized now.
29 rivington was ours (brendan jay sullivan). the lower east side / had to deal with both this guy / and lady gaga.
30 melissa explains it all (melissa joan hart). she once threw water / in oscar de la hoya's / face in mexico.
31 the mad bomber of new york: the extraordinary true story of the manhunt that paralyzed a city (michael m. greenburg). assumptions sans facts, / a byzantine timeline, and / thesaurus abuse.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 what was the best book you read this year?
02 how do you feel about jason segel playing david foster wallace in the upcoming film adaptation of david lipsky's although of course you end up becoming yourself?
03 who would you cast as david foster wallace?
04 if you were a character in a supernatural young-adult novel set in the roaring twenties, what would your special power be?
05 is it even possible for john banville (benjamin black)'s philip marlowe novel to be any good?
06 do prep-school novels just suck, or should i hold out for more never-let-me-go-ish exceptions that prove the rule?
01 magic for beginners (kelly link). i'd concuss myself / for the chance to discover / kelly link again.
02 atonement (ian mcewan). adolescence in / a rotten nutshell, rendered / with ageless sympathy.
03 sweet tooth (ian mcewan). spies on fiction, and / fiction on spies; atonement, / but so much more fun.
04 stranger things happen (kelly link). the hat story is / amazing, but i can't talk / about it. (terror.)
05 great plains (ian frazier). apprenticeships for / nonfiction aren't a thing, but / i'd be frazier's serf.
06 joseph anton (salman rushdie). a singular tale / of bravery for art's sake. / fuck yeah, publishing.
07 antarctica (gabrielle walker). with pym, this nonfic's / an overturned cooler of / polar-pure goodness.
08 pym (mat johnson). sometimes i wake up / and pad out to the shelf to / reread the best jokes.
09 boy, snow, bird (helen oyeyemi). snow white recast as / mothers, daughters, and sisters. / modern, clever magic.
10 every love story is a ghost story: a life of david foster wallace (d.t. max). a thoughtful bio; / predictably, made me miss / wallace even more.
11 beautiful ruins (jess walter). starlets, italians, / and the people who love them. / patchy but winning.
12 the dog stars (peter heller). apocalypse sans / j-law, plus a little plane / and a man-eater.
13 an equal music (vikram seth). better than dancing / about architecture. a / bit twee, but good twee.
14 the diviners (libba bray). more is more: psychic / flapper teens with ESP! / just let it happen.
15 amsterdam (ian mcewan). booker prize winner? / seriously? mcewan, / i expected more.
16 vengeance (benjamin black). john banville's crime books / lack some of their pulp lately; / i'll still drink to them.
17 my life (isadora duncan). craziest tunic- / wearer since cassandra; i / admire and fear her.
18 see a little light (bob mould). karmic opposite of / dean "scrooge" wareham's black postcards. / nice guy finished first.
19 the twelve (justin cronin). book 2, HIGHBROW BLOOD: / THE DICKENSING. honestly, / vampire methadone.
20 the starboard sea (amber dermont). probably i should / stop reading novels about / prep schools. most are MEH.
21 world war z (max brooks). zombie invasion / seen through a mosquito's eye: / i was entertained.
22 lost at sea (jon ronson). great subject choices, / less-than-diligent research. / funny, frustrating.
23 babayaga (toby barlow). are spies a match for / wicked old-country song-spells? / witch, please. (also fleas.)
24 how did you get this number (sloane crosley). i like crosley, but / this collection needs edits / and fewer bear deaths.
25 why we broke up (daniel handler and maira kalman). a sweet theme grows / cloying with repetition. / these teens don't charm me.
26 changing places (david lodge). dear me at nineteen: / we still think david lodge sucks. / regards, ancient me.
27 outrage (arnaldur indridason). clunky crime patter, / but good info on using / tandoori spices.
28 the psychopath test (jon ronson). i have a vein near / my eye that throbs when facts die. / it's python-sized now.
29 rivington was ours (brendan jay sullivan). the lower east side / had to deal with both this guy / and lady gaga.
30 melissa explains it all (melissa joan hart). she once threw water / in oscar de la hoya's / face in mexico.
31 the mad bomber of new york: the extraordinary true story of the manhunt that paralyzed a city (michael m. greenburg). assumptions sans facts, / a byzantine timeline, and / thesaurus abuse.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 what was the best book you read this year?
02 how do you feel about jason segel playing david foster wallace in the upcoming film adaptation of david lipsky's although of course you end up becoming yourself?
03 who would you cast as david foster wallace?
04 if you were a character in a supernatural young-adult novel set in the roaring twenties, what would your special power be?
05 is it even possible for john banville (benjamin black)'s philip marlowe novel to be any good?
06 do prep-school novels just suck, or should i hold out for more never-let-me-go-ish exceptions that prove the rule?
12.26.13
girl bear-hugging a dusty cello as "greensleeves" echoes down the subway tunnel like whalesong, i salute you.
12.23.13
And in the cellblock
of this logic, I eventually will have to try
a few things, as poltergeist,
on my own distant progeny, my sad
relatives, not too soon after my death
shall I do so, as that would be
so awful for all of us, but once a few
hundred years have passed,
and my future grandchildren
are living in their hovering tents,
I will attack them in their sleeping bags
with the silt of Mars making
its red tears in my eyes.
(josh bell, from "one day, alone on the houseboat, vince neil changes the name of everyone he has known, knows, or is like to know—male and female—to james," tin house #58)
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