I have a friend named Kace who adores the Cyrillic letter ж. Kace writes many letters to me, and early on in our correspondence, he ended each letter very simply: Love, Kace. Over time though, this became Love, K which evolved into LK, but as he began to write LK very quickly, this eventually morphed into the shape of the […]
Tag: Writing
A Little Life and Complete Abandon
In a Guardian interview some years ago, Hanya Yanagihara has this to say about Jude in A Little Life: I wanted my character Jude to feel to the reader like a self-taught human: someone who had to study and attempt as a young adult the sensations and feelings — trust, love, anger – that are most effectively learned in childhood. […]
Ulysses: 100 on 2·2·22
Today (2/2/22) marks the 100th anniversary of Ulysses by James Joyce, published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce’s 40th birthday. I thought you would enjoy this luscious piece of literary news. For my part, I am going to join Mr Leopold Bloom this evening and dine with relish on the inner organs of beasts and fowls. […]
Joan Didion: Writing is the ability to change reality
Joan, I turn to you for straight talk. You say writing is the ability to change reality, change the beginning, change the end, to upend death and make immortal. Yup, yup, so let’s dive in and do just that. When you say the year of magical thinking, I’m going balls to the wall and magical it’s gonna be. I think […]
DFW: A Vast Cosmic Skull
DFW A vast cosmic skull. “You never know when the magic will descend on you. You never know when the grooves will open up. And once the magic descends… you don’t want to change even the smallest detail.” h/t Marion Ettlinger
Turning Identity into Gold
If there is one academic book out there truly inspired by Whitman’s famous “I am large, I contain multitudes,” then this is it: Authorship as Alchemy by David Glenn Kropf. A brutal lit-crit read, but the concept is simple: What if writers (what if each one of us) were not just a mere single person, but multitudes? Not just woman […]
