Categories
Archives
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- Review: Prime Minister (2025)
- “That is no country for old men.” — William Butler Yeats
- “Superfluous people in the service of brute power….” — Ryszard Kapuściński
- Supernatural re-watch, Season 1
- “I am the most famous unknown of the century.” — Djuna Barnes
- “It’s innately in me to want to yell and love at the same time.” — Jessie Reyez
- “People always think of me as Maria and I think of me as Maria all the time.” –Sonia Manzano
- “I really genuinely look forward to coming to work every day.” — Treat Williams
- Happy Birthday, Chips Moman
- “Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson
Recent Comments
- sheila on “Superfluous people in the service of brute power….” — Ryszard Kapuściński
- Bill Wolfe on “Superfluous people in the service of brute power….” — Ryszard Kapuściński
- sheila on “Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson
- sheila on “Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson
- Jincy Willett on “Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson
- sheila on Mike Doughty, if you’re out there …
- Dan on Mike Doughty, if you’re out there …
- sheila on Mike Doughty, if you’re out there …
- Dan on Mike Doughty, if you’re out there …
- sheila on “Boredom is very important in life. It helps you feel when something is wrong.” — John Strasberg
- Bunky F. on “Boredom is very important in life. It helps you feel when something is wrong.” — John Strasberg
- sheila on Supernatural re-watch, Season 4
- Lyrie on Supernatural re-watch, Season 4
- sheila on Supernatural re-watch, Season 4
- sheila on Supernatural re-watch, Season 6
- sheila on Supernatural re-watch, Season 3
- Lyrie on Supernatural re-watch, Season 4
- Lyrie on Supernatural re-watch, Season 6
- Lyrie on Supernatural re-watch, Season 3
- sheila on Supernatural re-watch, Season 3
-
Tag Archives: Joan Didion
“The ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.” — Joan Didion
It’s her birthday today. Someone said that Didion’s (seemingly) simple sentences are like a perfect puzzle. If you remove one line from a paragraph, everything falls apart. Her writing is that well-constructed. She was a notoriously painstaking self-editor. She would … Continue reading
“He who has never felt, momentarily, what madness is has but a mouthful of brains.” — Herman Melville
“Old nineteenth-century New England must have been fearful–in what other country would Thoreau, Melville, Whitman and Dickinson have been so overlooked?” — Robert Lowell, letter to Elizabeth Bishop, December 12, 1958 Herman Melville was born on this day in 1819. … Continue reading
“I am interested in the goddam sad science of war.” — Ernest Hemingway
Paris Review interview, 2007: Interviewer: Is it possible [Hemingway] showed a generation how to get emotion into a sentence without mentioning emotion? Norman Mailer: Yes, and he did it more than anyone ever had before or after. But he’s a … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Elizabeth Bishop, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, Joan Didion, Truman Capote
11 Comments
Catching up with interesting people saying interesting things
Link roundup on my Substack, to my own stuff, yes, but also to some things I’ve read over the last month I adore: a beautiful piece by my friend Charlie on Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, an interview with director Susan … Continue reading
Posted in Movies, Personal
Tagged Joan Didion, newsletter, Play It As It Lays, Tuesday Weld
Leave a comment
2022 Books Read
Some re-reads this year, but a lot of new-to-me authors as well. New novels written by faves. Been a year of upheaval and transitions. I’ve managed to keep up my regular reading schedule. I just don’t feel right if I’m … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Alfred Hitchcock, Anne Fadiman, art, Australia, Biography, books read, Canada, Christopher Hitchens, Edmund Burke, Elinor Lipman, England, entertainment biography, essays, Eve Babitz, friends, Germany, Greece, Hitler, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Janet Malcolm, Joan Didion, Joseph Cornell, Lorrie Moore, Machiavelli, Master and Margarita, Memoirs, Michael Curtiz, Mikhail Bulgakov, Mitford sisters, nonfiction, Paul Zindel, politics, Quentin Tarantino, Robert De Niro, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespeare, The Beatles, Tom Wolfe, true crime, Victor Klemperer, Victor Serge, war, William Hazlitt, William Wordsworth, WWII, YA fiction
10 Comments
“All creative art must rise out of a specific soil and flicker with the spirit of place.” — D.H. Lawrence
“Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn’t like it – if he wants a safe seat in the audience – let him read somebody else.” — D.H. Lawrence, 1925 D.H. Lawrence was … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, D.H. Lawrence, England, H.D., Harold Bloom, Joan Didion, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Rebecca West, Robert Graves, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden
3 Comments
April 2022 Viewing Diary
When I first got the Raging Bull gig, I began a re-watch of all the Scorsese-De Niro movies – at least the ones clustered around that period. I grew up on these films. These movies were huge to me as … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged Anjelica Huston, biopic, Brian De Palma, Canada, Christopher Walken, comedy, Dana Andrews, documentary, drama, Elia Kazan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, France, historical drama, Italy, Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Joan Didion, John Cazale, Liza Minnelli, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Mickey Rourke, musicals, Ray Milland, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Robert Mitchum, romantic drama, Russia, sci-fi, Tuesday Weld, Ukraine, Vietnam, women directors, WWII
12 Comments
R.I.P. Joan Didion
I can’t believe it. Sometimes it’s hard for me to find the words. It’s amazing that the two chronicler-poets of California – very different writers with very different points of view about their home state would die the same week. … Continue reading
Excerpt from Slouching Towards Bethlehem: ‘John Wayne: A Love Story’, by Joan Didion
For John Wayne’s Birthday A second excerpt from the essay collection: Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (FSG Classics), by Joan Didion This is one of the best things written about John Wayne. It’s not just an essay about who he was … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Books, On This Day
Tagged Elvis Presley, essays, Joan Didion, John Wayne, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
46 Comments