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Tag Archives: essays
“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
So you see that old libel that we were cynics and skeptics was nonsense from the beginning. On the contrary we were the great believers. — F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Generation” It’s his birthday today. First off, here’s a piece … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Baz Luhrmann, essays, F. Scott Fitzgerald, fiction, The Great Gatsby
20 Comments
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” — H.L. Mencken
“You know what H.L. Mencken said one time about religious people? He said he’d been greatly misunderstood. He said he didn’t hate them. He simply found them comical.” – Kurt Vonnegut Today is the birthday of one of the greatest … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged A Mencken Chrestomathy, essays, H.L. Mencken, nonfiction
12 Comments
August 2025 Snapshots
What a month. Old and new friends and also new televisions. New York. Birthday parties and grown-up parties. Authoritarianism. I have so much more free time since my “obligations” to the Frankenstein book ended in July. Work on the book … Continue reading
Posted in Personal
Tagged Elvis Presley, essays, family, fiction, friends, Lord Byron, snapshots
2 Comments
“A ‘smartcracker’ they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy.” — Dorothy Parker
“Oh, good Lord, what’s the matter with women, anyway?” “Please don’t call me ‘women,’” she said. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “I didn’t mean to use bad words.” — Dorothy Parker, “Dusk Before Fireworks” It’s her birthday today. I cannot … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Dorothy Parker, E.M. Forster, Edna St. Vincent Millay, essays, fiction, Oscar Wilde, poetry
18 Comments
“Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.” — Walter Benjamin
“Often an era most closely brands with its seal those who have been least influenced by it, who have been most remote from it, and who therefore have suffered most. So it was with Proust, with Kafka, with Karl Kraus, … Continue reading
“Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.” — Janet Malcolm
It’s her birthday today. She died in 2021. I started out with The Silent Woman, many years ago, her book on the challenges of writing about Sylvia Plath, particularly in lieu of the draconian Plath estate, run – Shakespearean-ly – … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged essays, Janet Malcolm, nonfiction, Sylvia Plath
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“I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.” — George Orwell
Orwell was born on this day. When Animal Farm was released in a new edition, Christopher Hitchens wrote specifically about the quote from Orwell shown in the title above. Very few people can “face unpleasant facts”. Hitchens: A commissar who … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged 1984, Animal Farm, dystopia, England, essays, George Orwell, nonfiction, politics, Russia, war
7 Comments
“I was a sinister child, lazy and cynical.” — Eve Babitz
“What I wanted, although at the time I didn’t understand what the thing was because no one ever tells you anything until you already know it, was everything. Or as much as I could get with what I had to … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged essays, Eve Babitz, fiction, nonfiction
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April 2025 Snapshots
Had breakfast with one of my oldest friends (she who rescued a hawk, in a blazing act of bravery, which I think the hawk recognized and appreciated). We now live pretty near each other, which is wild, after me living … Continue reading
“Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
Joan Acocella, longtime dance critic for The New Yorker, and regular contributor to the New York Review of Books died in 2024 at the age of 78, and I did not mark her passing. It’s her birthday today. Acocella brought … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged ballet, Bob Fosse, dance, Dorothy Parker, essays, H.L. Mencken, Joan Acocella, Martha Graham, nonfiction, Nureyev, Primo Levi
2 Comments