John: “Does a fine job” doesn’t tell us anything about the book and says everything about your love for cliche. But your review gave me a lot of laughs, in large part because it revealed much about your woefully humorless soul. “Humor hounds” and “humor fiends?” “Convulse in respiratory spasms?” Is anybody editing you anymore? Or is this what they cobbled up from what you turned in?
Brief Roundup
- An emo version of the Footloose soundtrack. “Holding Out for a Hero” was never really intended as a song you’d want to slice your wrists to. And if you ply me with enough liquor, I could go on about my complex feelings about Bonnie Tyler at length. But I won’t. I’ll just say that the man behind this deranged concept deserves props for transmuting a teenage classic and removing all hope and redemption from its soundtrack. (via Quiddity)
- Leave it to Rebecca Solnit to play the predictable 1936 Godwin’s card. I much prefer Erin O’Brien’s blunt summation.
- Al Franken: not the Senatorial shoe-in he thought he was.
- Shouldn’t there be something literary here? Not necessarily.
- Samantha Power on Russia.
- Roger Ebert on the end (and the beginning) of Ebert and Roeper.
Responding to Richards: August 14
Linda: Nothing wrong whatsoever in dwelling upon or lusting over chairs. To evoke the words of MFK Fisher (who once defended her culinary exactitude by pointing out just how much time one spends over a lifetime eating), if one works a sedentary profession, a chair is most certainly important. My own writing chair is not the most ideal. The leather on the right arm has started to fray and light green (hopefully noncarcinogenic) fluff now bulges outward. I suspect this is because I accidentally spilled a beverage on this particular spot about two months ago. But I do have a strange emotional attachment to this chair, even though I know that it will crumble to dust eventually. I suspect I would have an emotional attachment to any chair I spent happy moments writing in, even if it caused one too many trips to a chiropractor. Of course, the Barcelona chair is not really made for writing. At least not the way we know it today. But perhaps you dwell upon this exemplar because you are having some doubts about your present furniture. Doubts about furniture are to be expected in life, and reveries do help assuage certain feelings. Or perhaps you are currently thinking that you need to sit lower to the ground. The buttocks to floor distance is certainly diminished through Mies van der Rohe’s design. And yet the famed German did not live in a world of computers and laptops. I’m wondering now how much computers and laptops have permanently altered the forward-thinking low-leaning furniture aspirations of today’s visionaries, and whether it might be resisted through living without this technology for a period of six months.
Responding to Dixon: August 14
Darby: About these protean layouts of yours, I recognize the compulsions of a fellow neurotic. Really, sir, it’s the words that count more than anything else. And it seems to me that you’re tinkering around with the look because you’re too damn concerned with the more important component of blogging: the words. You’ve even gone so far to hide them with that preposterously large graphic at the top. Minimalist, my ass. You’re avoiding your duty. To write something on the blog every so often, to keep things fun, to tell us what is on your mind. Do I have to go out to Ohio and kick your ass? Stop this right now. Write. Simply write. You have my vote of confidence. But what of your own? Don’t give a damn about the audience. Write. And write again. Let us see what you’re writing. We don’t give a damn about your layout. We care about your words. Write. Leave the visual trickery to those who are truly frightened. Write.
Responding to Orwell: August 14
George: Nothing from you in the past few days. What’s going on? Hesitant to log weather and reddening blackberries? I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Who could possibly have anticipated so many souls hanging onto your most pedantic words seventy years later? And, yes, George (can I call you Eric?), I’m one of them. I know that, being dead, you’re not exactly in a position to care about what your readers might think now. But if some residue remains aside from the tomes that settle in the dust, don’t let the haters bring you down. At least you have the comfort of writing words without getting instant feedback from readers. None of us have that now, George. Not anymore. I suppose that’s why the book exists. There, we can write about damn near everything and in the early stages of applying the nib to paper (or, more pragmatically, fingers to keyboard), we can machete through an unfettered wilderness of words before we start hunting endangered species. Got caught in the rain myself this afternoon. Heavy downpour, soaked shirt, no grass snake. Wildlife encounter yesterday. Loud squeak from rail, followed by rat just more than a foot long, dragging a bit of Styrofoam into a hole, then screechy onset of approaching car. The rats do seem to know when the subways come, making their cameos at the eleventh hour. This evening, saw spitting image of old high school friend in the streets. Gait, swagger, height, loping arms, and frame a total match. Followed man a block to see if he was truly a Doppelganger, but when he turned, there was no physiognomic resemblance. Phone rings frequently now that cell’s back in action, but am trying to make this more of a luxury. Frequently unplugging from Internet to get work done, to map out terrain while there’s still some time. Rest easy, George. Am eagerly awaiting your next volley and will respond in kind, even though some are losing patience with this format. Well, I like it. So there.