reading and writing | Wait until next year

September 16, 2013

I remember when this was all fields

Jonathan Franzen is telling us what he thinks is wrong with the modern world. Rebecca Solnit sees the changes to our world post-internet as profound and troubling. These are two recent examples of the personal essay as a wail against life today, particularly life with technology, the internet, etc. Both these articles, at least to some extent, look back to supposedly halcyon days and see technology etc as the destroyers of an idyllic past.
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September 12, 2013

A probably unnecessary post about David Foster Wallace

Sign at a David Foster Wallace event

On the anniversary of David Foster Wallace’s death I expect there will be a glut of people sharing that This is Water video. It is a lovely piece of writing, but an odd one as it seems to have become this whole new creature, half self-help guide, half unintentional self-eulogy. Read the rest of this entry »

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August 18, 2013

Sunday Reading

People collecting their newspaper in the rain

All of this week’s reads are well worth your time. Not that I’d share a load of articles that are so-so, but these are particularly excellent and/or thought-provoking…

Image from the State Library and Archives of Florida

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August 12, 2013

Two quotations about/from authors I haven’t yet read, so probably shouldn’t be mentioning

Man and woman writing

“Asked, in 1954, why he chose to change languages, Beckett answered: out of a “need to be ill equipped”. His response is exceedingly sly because, if you listen more attentively, its boastful tone is deafening. For in French the need “to be ill equipped” (d’être mal armé) doesn’t sound very different from the need to be (another) Mallarmé (d’être Mallarmé). Anything less than a Mallarmé status would not have been enough for a Beckett on his quest for the new self.”

“My being a poet probably has something to do with my preferring questions to answers, ambiguity to resolution, and with my being bored to tears by most of the mainstream supposedly realistic novels that run bland 21st-century sentences through 19th-century structures in order to produce what’s essentially very inefficient television.”

Image from Mennonite Church USA Archives, via Flickr

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August 11, 2013

Sunday Reading

Boys reading the comics from the Sunday papers

This week I’ve been working my way through David Peace’s new novel, Red or Dead. It is outstanding, although perhaps an acquired taste as it combines football with some proper modernist writing, but if you have the slightest interest in either you really should pick this book up.

I’ve also been reading the following shorter pieces, all well worth a look:

Image from State Library of New South Wales, via Flickr

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