May 2011
6 posts
“That was a memorable day to me, for it made...
April 2011
12 posts
5 tags
“Real beginnings are like a fanfare of trumpets, like the first notes of a jazz tune, cutting short tedium, making for continuity: then you say about these evenings within evenings: ” I was out for a walk, it was an evening in May.” You walk, the moon has just risen, you feel lazy, vacant, a little empty. And then suddenly you think: “Something has happened.” No...
Extract from my OK Cupid profile, April 19, 2011:
What I’m doing with my life:
I’m working from home (where I can wear batik-chinos every day) and working on things too foolish to talk about in my off hours. One of those may or may not be “Trying to find my soul mate.” Another might be, “Going for the third spinach salad of the day.”
From my essay on Mind of a Mnemonist:
14. When I was young, my parents would take me to this slightly older kid’s house. I was four or five. The kid’s name was Robbie. He was half-deaf, or maybe all-deaf, and when he tried to talk it sounded like a goose. I didn’t like him, but when we went there my parents threw me in the backyard with him while they talked to his parents in...
1 tag
From Hawkes to Updike to Baker, I pass on these words to you, dear writer:
“To make him fly, I only wrote, ‘He flew.’”
3 tags
Flatmancrooked is closing. Sad! I did hear rumors of its demise over the weekend but now it’s official.
They did some pretty cool things like their LAUNCH initiative to publish debut authors such as fellow tumblr users Emma Straub and Edan Lepucki. It looked something like this: “During the Launch period, patrons can buy a “share” and thus help “launch” the career of a promising...
2 tags
My friend Charlene Kwon's story Grease and Other... →
4 tags
“Resist the radical threat of non-being by the courage to be as oneself.”
– —Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be.
Tempted to form a band of outsiders to color quotes from the book on the bathroom stalls of bookshops, dive bars, pentecostal churches, and police stations. Deeply rewarding book for anyone patient enough to wade through the multitudinous instances of the word...
4 tags
A few things that are going on in Iowa City, Iowa this weekend:
1. Lindsay Hunter, Tao Lin, and Ted Thompson are reading at Prairie Lights books on April 1 at 6:00 (or maybe 7:00?). Details here. You know that I’m a longtime (re: at least six months) fan of Lindsay Hunter since meeting her one night last year. (Read about that here.) I make a brief “side-cameo” appearance in...