February 2012
66 posts
New From Junot Díaz →
riverheadbooks:
Junot Díaz is coming out with a new book in September, his publisher is expected to announce on Monday.
Anonymous asked: It's amazing that you have such a great supprt system in your best friend and boyfriend. Do they ever get jealous of each other? Do you ever fight? How do you balance these things out?
rejectamentalist manifesto: Stand down: literature... →
tentacular:
Stand down: literature has defeated the Thought Police. Belgium’s supreme court has defeated the mischief-making of the whining PC brigade. Tintin is not banned. Huzzah!
The badness of the bad faith involved in the commentariat’s discussion of this issue, the relentlessness of their categoric elisions, the unpleasantness of their crowing over the victory, should come as no...
random thoughts
It dawns on me that I haven’t seen snow in a while. My geographic trajectories have meant that I’m always skipping over both winters and summers, so that my life has become patches of unending springs and falls. My biologist friends liken me to seasonal swallows and geese, flying south or north depending on climates and temperatures. Perhaps they’re right. But my migratory...
Anonymous asked: We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. - T.S. Eliot
So I have now begun my biannual, protracted, multicontintental excursion to see all the best men in my life. Marcus, I hope you bring me my curry chips.
Happy.
“It was too big for him, that was the truth. It had never really progressed, it...”
– George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Anyone who has poured their soul and years of their time into writing a novel can probably relate to Orwell’s idealistic Gordon Comstock.
(via fortuneandglory)
pitfalls of skyping at work without a headset
Me: Vegan red velvet, honey. It's the best thing ever.
Mark: Chocolate with chocolate frosting.
Me: Or a mango cake, with some kind of vegan buttercream.
Mark: Multi-layered cake. With all the cakes we like piled on top of each other.
Me: Genius.
Mark's co-worker: Are you guys talking about your wedding?
Metaphorical crickets: chirp..?
“You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class,...”
– John Green
Found at Whiskey River
(via fragmentbyfragment)
“The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,...”
– Billy Collins, from “Silence” (via proustitute)
Nathan Lane: A Different Cut →
The lovely best friend is featured on A Different Cut. Lots of pictures of him shot by Cholo dela Vega. Go check it out.
Thanks to Nansan for the heads up!
4 tags
down with the arseoisie
“The car park is full of black Range Rovers, the car that more than any other indicates that its owner is a member of the arseoisie.” Marina Hyde, The Guardian, writing about the twattiness of part-time (or perhaps it’s former now?) Blur bassist and full-time cheese bore, Alex James.
Dear Marina Hyde,
Thank you for coining the word arseoisie. It is absolutely amazing and will...
“Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed...”
– James Joyce (via libraryland)
NOUVELLA: On "Pride and Prejudice" →
lazybookreviews:
I was reminded of one of my favourite seminar discussions, in which we became quite agitated over the question of Mrs. Bennet’s BASIC CORRECTNESS.
We all love Mr. Bennet, naturally, because he’s cutting and delightful and adores Lizzy, but Mrs. Bennet is the only character in the entire novel who seems aware of the basic desperation of her family’s situation. Newsflash,...
“No matter where I go, I still end up me. What’s missing never changes. The...”
– Haruki Murakami (via veronca)
how to write news items in the Philippines
Beware how you tumble and tweet. You can end up quoted in the news.
quarklovesyou:
1. read twitter
2. read tumblr
3. cut. paste.
4. add connectors such as “prompting Quark to say” and “the rest of her post read”
5. voila! http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/351330/quark-henares-thanks-hayden-kho
with apologies and a ;) to Julien Matabuena, who is probably just doing his job
“In your twenties, you’re practically a slave to your dreams. You abuse your body...”
– Wincy Aquino Ong a.k.a. Patience Dear Juggernaut (via planetickets)
***
And in your thirties, usually if you’re struggling with an artistic dream of some kind, you look at the scrap heap that is your used-up self, take a deep breath, and pound on it some more.
“Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.”
– Harold Pinter (via libraryland)
The irony is that the attempt to produce good writing can make life a bit like hell.
editor & 90's non sequiturs
Me: I'm all out. I can't do this. He makes me think boiling myself alive might be a more feasible course of action right now.
Mark: Tell him he's smothering. Tell him you need space. Tell him he's beginning to resemble the bad boyfriend you don't ever want to have.
Me: Can't you use your boyfriend super powers and make him stop?
Mark: That would only work if we were in the same zipcode.
Me: But do you know what he's saying now? "This is like walking on fire. Firewalk with me".
Mark: At least he's referencing David Lynch.
Me: ...
i worry about my friends
Me: I think I tend to dress better in Europe than anywhere else. Possibly because you judge me more.
Marcus: Well, I think there is some correlation to how one dresses and one's intellect. The marauding rioters were a right scruffy bunch.
dear editor
If you would just leave me alone for ten minutes, then maybe I can actually finish revising this stupid chapter properly. Hell, never mind the chapter. I’d settle for a page.
You are absolutely fantastic otherwise.
Sincerely, W
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the...”
– James Baldwin (via doubledaybooks)
NY knicks and Jeremy Lin →
“It has become standard issue for successful Asian Americans to just sort of avoid talking about race. This, I guess, makes sense along the spectrum of assimilation, but it’s an inherently elitist stance that plays a bit too coy, especially in a country that has largely decided to turn a blind eye toward racism against Asian Americans.” - Jay Caspian Kang, Person of Interest:...
Valentine's Day quiz: Tragic love in literature →
Lapham's Quarterly: Edith Wharton was a prude? We... →
mcnallyjackson:
laphamsquarterly:
Hi there, Jonathan Franzen. We hope you are having a lovely Tuesday. So you say Edith Wharton was a prude, confined largely to a sexless marriage, hemmed in by plainness and haunted to write about the very beauty and passion that was lacking in her own life?
But have you read her porn?…
Heavens!
Neil Gaiman: Good Morning Melbourne:The Amanda... →
Well, it IS for Neil. So Melbourne-ites. Here we go.
neil-gaiman:
Right. Okay boys and girls, girlboys and boygirls. Gather round. Check the door. Is anyone listening? No? Good.
We have a location and a plan…
(This is the sequel to http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/17543226671/attention-melbourne-australia-the-amanda-palmer. Read that first if you…
3 tags
Read, please, and help me boost the signal
Hey guys,
One of my friends - the best friend of one of my favorite roommates in New York - is sick and needs help. She has leukemia. She left her home in Cairo to get help in london, because they don’t have the drugs that she needs in Egypt, and she can’t find a match in her family and Egypt doesn’t do transplants from unrelated donors. The thing is, cancer isn’t...
“But the moment you start thinking of yourself alone, absolutely alone, and...”
– Nick Joaquin, The Woman Who Had Two Navels (via bookmania)
***
I saw this on my dash and had to reblog. I don’t often see quotes by Filipino writers floating around the interwebs.
Nick (short for Nicomedes) Joaquin was one of the grand patriarchs of Philippine Literature, but even more...