Excerpt

"The capacity to make dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

-E.B. White's Here is New York

On life

"Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable...""

- Roald Dahl's Matilda (a forever ago favorite)

Nabokov, reworked

ooh
marketing scheme, 1. allie, 0.

(via Samantha)

Excerpt

"I've always been good at making money," he said, "but I never learned how to save shit. I drink too much wine... I can be antisocial and temperamental and defensive. I am a man of routine, which means I'm boring. I have very little patience with idiots." He smiled and tried to leaven up the moment. "Also, I can't look at you without wanting to have sex with you."

"I can work with that," I said.

- From "Committed" by Elizabeth Gilbert

Excerpt

"Legos used to be jumbled batches of bright bricks with the occasional wheel or axle. Now you can buy the Star Wars Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser kit, 1,170 pieces with instructions longer than The Brothers Karamazov. You build a cool spaceship, so long as you follow the directions – a useful skill, but no the same as constructing a cathedral out of nothing but cubes and confidence."

-Nancy Gibbs in "The Power of Play-Doh"

Excerpt

"I don't think New York City is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters – in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him.

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it – once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough."

- "The Making of a New Yorker" by John Steinbeck

Excerpt

"When people start flipping out in the library, a special thing happens—patrons get interested; suddenly the porn on their screen isn't as interesting as the fight that may be taking place just a few feet away. They don't leave their Internet terminals to help out because they're afraid they'll lose their time (libraries learned this months ago during a rather sizable earthquake, when patrons were more concerned about getting their Internet time back when the library was being evacuated, than whether or not the light panel dangling above their head might fall on top of them), they simply turn their chairs and stare."

- McSweeney's "Dispatches from a Public Librarian" By Scott Douglas

(A favorite)

Excerpt

"Neither camp seemed to harbor any illusions. This war would be neither quick nor glorious."

- From "A Rainbow In The Night" by Dominique Lapierre.


The latest from Lapierre is the gritty history of South Africa. Reading about clashes stemmed from territory and religious disputes, it's impossible not to draw a more modern comparison.
Tragedy, on repeat.

Want.

The Coralie Bickford-Smith Clothbound Series for Penguin.

ooohh, gimme!

Excerpt

"I'm not much but I'm all I think about." 

- Michael Gizzi's "New Depths of Deadpan"

Handwriting and Character

While poking through a stack of books this weekend after brunch, I found this little beauty. From 1923, it matches up every possible human emotion with its appropriate handwriting sample and analyzes the penmanship of historic figures: Napoleon, Elizabeth l, William Penn, the like... 

My choice chapters: 

1. Samples of Sensuousness 

2. Samples of the Magnanimous 

3. Special study of the Capital "M"

4. Determination in Horizontal Strokes

5. This Writer is a Sexual Voluptuary

It's written in a lyrical way, the kind of writing that was acceptable before we tore up the English language with commas and contractions and the overuse of appropriate pronouns. It is one of the most romantic things I've ever read, probably because it's one of the most oddly fascinating. But perhaps the most peculiar is the Copyright: All rights reserved, including that of the translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian. Because clearly, those Scandinavians sure are lax in the area of literary propriety...

The unfortunate fact: We have no use for this book in modern society. Our every correspondence is no longer entirely dependent on penmanship and we have almost no need for it. I can go days without writing more than a few sentences at a time by hand, and when I do, it's almost always for pleasure rather than necessity. When did free-hand writing become a simply a hobby? It's heartbreaking. 

A resolution: This week, I will buy a nice pen and scrawl on paper. Trees be damned! 

Enthralling.

Tuesday at the office

Live blogging of the reading of Dan Brown's latest affront on writing, "The Lost Symbol."

What an awful novel. What a fun day.

Excerpt

"It seemed a romantic business to be a successful literary man - you were not ever going to be as famous as a movie star but what you had was probably longer-lived; you were never going to have the power of a man of strong political or religious convictions but you were certainly more independent. Of course within the practice of your trade you were forever unsatisfied - but I, for one, would not have chosen any other."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald in "The Crack-Up"

Writing's on the wall

Well, ain't that the truth.
Sigh.

I spent a rainy afternoon rummaging through a basement of books and inhaling the musk that can only be found in the presence of aged leather. I wish I could purchase it as a scented candle.

Excerpt

"In the late afternoon he came upon scattered bones where the wolves had made a kill. The d bris had been a caribou calf an hour before, squawking and running and very much alive. He contemplated the bones, clean-picked and polished, pink with the cell-life in them which had not yet died. Could it possibly be that he might be that ere the day was done! Such was life, eh? A vain and fleeting thing. It was only life that pained. There was no hurt in death. To die was to sleep. It meant cessation, rest. Then why was he not content to die?"

From "Love of Life" by Jack London

Excerpt

"Then we heard a far-off call. We listened and nodded to each other. One two three. Pause. One two. Pause. It was the metallic squeal of a basketball on asphalt, the teenage Morse code of indolent boys that said: I AM OVER HERE. We followed the trail." 

- From "Sag Harbor" by Colson Whitehead 

(The nostalgic sound of summer.) 

Excerpt

"I think we can all agree that sleeping around is a great way to meet people. Furthermore, sleeping around with midgets is a great way to meet midgets. The great thing about sleeping with a midget is that first you have sex with them and then you can use them as a pillow. Those little midgets have it so easy. Sometimes when I see one, I want to chase it." 

- From Chelsea Handler's "My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands" 

!!!

Maya Angelou is coming! Maya Angelou is coming! 

Ms. Angelou will be speaking here at the beginning of March. Color me ecstatic. 

Joyce Carol Oates

<---- I heard Joyce Carol Oates speak yesterday. The woman is so charming. And, adorably old. She read an exert from her soon-to-be new book, "Wild Nights" based on the poem by Emily Dickinson. It's a collection of fiction stories based on the characters of famous writers like Dickinson, Hemingway, and Faulkner. In the piece, Emily Dickinson was a robot in the future who talked in lyrics. Strange, but a really cool spin on an idea that could have been really cliche. 

Other highlights: 

"You can be a literary writer and never actually meet any real people."

"The most psychologically violent sport is chess. If you're not totally insane when you start, you end up a paranoid schizophrenic." 

"I believe that art is the highest power of the human spirit." 

Oh, it's far. Not for long.

Six-word memoirs on Love & Heartbreak

Favorites: 

I lured you with my mustache.

Craig's List yields more than furniture.