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- “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
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Tag Archives: fiction
“If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.” — Beverly Cleary
“I think children want to read about normal, everyday kids. That’s what I wanted to read about when I was growing up. I wanted to read about the sort of boys and girls that I knew in my neighborhood and … Continue reading
“As an outsider I was free to pick my own literary traditions, to build my own system of literary values.” — Dubravka Ugrešić
“Retouching is our favourite artistic device. Each of us is a curator in his own museum…Uncover A, cover up B. Remove all spots. Keep your mouth shut. Think of your tongue as a weapon. Think one thing and say another. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Croatia, Dubravka Ugrešić, fiction, nonfiction, war, Yugoslavia
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“Life was bitter and I was not. All around me was poverty and sordidness but I refused to see it that way. By turning it into jokes, I made it bearable.” — Max Shulman
It’s Max Shulman’s birthday. Who the hell is Max Shulman, some of you may ask? He was one of the most popular humorists of his day, who reached his peak of popularity in the 1950s. He’s the guy who created … Continue reading
“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” — Jack Kerouac
It’s his birthday today. In Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe paints a pretty brutal picture of Jack Kerouac, at a party in New York, when the Hippie Bus rolled into town. (Robert Stone was also at that party. He … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, fiction, Jack Kerouac, James Salter
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“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.” — David Foster Wallace
“Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.” — David Foster Wallace It’s his … Continue reading
“All my work is about uncovering, especially uncovering of voices that speak without governance, or that speak without being heard.” — Seamus Deane
“So broken was my father’s family, that it felt to me like a catastrophe you could live with only if you kept it quiet, let it die down of its own accord like a dangerous fire … I felt we … Continue reading
“Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.” — Charles Dickens
DICKENS MISCELLANIA: QUOTES AND APPRECIATIONS My favorite Dickens? Oliver Twist was my gateway drug. I read it when I was 11. Because I was obsessed with the movie. Tale of Two Cities came next. Read when I was 15 in … Continue reading
“I don’t think my books should be in prison libraries.” — Patricia Highsmith
It’s Patricia Highsmith’s birthday today. He wouldn’t have killed someone just to save Derwatt Ltd. or even Bernard, Tom supposed. Tom had killed Murchison because Murchison had realized, in the cellar, that he had impersonated Derwatt. Tom had killed Murchison … Continue reading
“I look back on my life and draw one great generalization: IT WAS MY REFUSAL TO TAKE CAUTIOUS ADVICE THAT MADE ME.” — Jack London
“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent … Continue reading
2025 Books Read
I ended last year with a flurry of Oscar Wilde’s short stories, declaring I’d read all the plays in 2025. I mean, there were only five, sadly, due to the homophobic violence of his own society. I know these plays … Continue reading
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Tagged Anton Chekhov, Austria, books read, Charles Lamb, children's books, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, David Lynch, Dubravka Ugrešić, England, essays, fiction, France, Frankenstein, Germany, Guillermo del Toro, Hungary, Ireland, Jane Austen, Janet Malcolm, John Keats, Lord Byron, Mark Danielewski, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Memoirs, nonfiction, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Roald Dahl, Robert Kaplan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Russia, sci-fi, Scotland, scripts, Spain, The Beatles, Twin Peaks, William Shakespeare, Yugoslavia
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