February 2012
1 post
New Grub Street
George Gissing wrote this in 1891, but it’s basically what I imagine the magazine writers of today say to each other when they talk about their jobs. The one talking is a 25-year old sort-of freelance writer named Jasper:
“I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit down in a spirit of long-eared...
January 2012
1 post
Inferno
“My girlfriend and I were standing in our kitchen—while I pondered the hopelessness of writing a book about a poet. Well she tooted. Have you ever considered the demographic you are writing for. Yes I have as a matter of fact. While I lowered her into a shallow grave.” -Eileen Myles, Inferno
September 2011
2 posts
Ellen Willis on Bruce Springsteen
“I especially enjoyed the way he moved, acting out each song (dancing down the street, mounting his Harley) with just the right mixture of drama and self-parody, projecting a sense of maleness that depended not on the exclusion or denigration or conquest of women but on his appreciation of his body and what it could do.”
That’s the best description of Bruce that I have ever...
April 2011
3 posts
“There is no Hitler building as such. We are quartered in Centenary Hall, a dark...”
– Don DeLillo, White Noise, p. 9. (via keyholez) (If you, like me, are somebody who reviews things or writes about culture in a non-fictional way, I think it’s healthy to check in with this quote every once in a while. Otherwise you can end up writing like Zizek or Jonathan Lethem.)
More Tocqueville
Sorry, I’ll stop after this, but one of the really nice things about “Democracy in America” is although Tocqueville is a genius at making fun of Americans, he isn’t petty. He saves his serious criticisms for the country’s serious wrongs, like slavery or the treatment of Indians.
That said, check out what a genius he is at making fun of us! This excerpt is a bit long,...
Tocqueville
I’m about 700 pages in to Democracy in America, and I keep thinking about how bored I would have been by this book had I been forced to read it in high school. Actually it’s the best.
Here’s a quote from a chapter called “ON THE GRAVITY OF AMERICANS AND WHY IT DOES NOT PREVENT THEM FROM ACTING RASHLY”: “An American, instead of dancing joyously in the public...
February 2011
2 posts
Two ideas about buying things
I always had a passion for flashing
Before I had it, I close my eyes and imagine
-Kanye West
and
Joel has designed a watch
In platinum.
This watch is the sequel
To anyone you have ever lost.
-Frederick Seidel
December 2010
1 post
September 2010
3 posts
The Wire at Harvard
Because of Lorrie Moore’s boring, boring piece in the NYRB, I was thinking again about how Harvard is teaching a course on The Wire this year. Earlier this month, two of the professors who will be teaching the course made their case for why using a TV show to teach people about the inner city is a good idea. Then at The Awl, Choire objected to the idea that a fictional TV show is the best...
This sounds STRANGELY like something made with no...
August 2010
1 post
July 2010
6 posts
Madeleine, describing a woman she knows who weirds...
“Her face just looks like it was made before they invented perspective.”
Dylan Matthews vs. n+1
Last week, n+1 put an essay by Mark Greif, called “Gut-level Legislation, or, Redistribution,” on its website. The argument is that since the purpose of government is to “share out money so that there are no poor citizens,” a 100% tax should be imposed on all incomes over $100,000. Then Dylan Matthews, who blogs under the Ezra Klein umbrella at The Washington Post,...
Wavves
Another confident, ringing endorsement of the band Wavves!
“Which, yeah, is not necessarily productive of great art, and easy to criticize on human/moral ground — but in terms of crafting a persona that responds to the situation, and forces an answer to some of the questions that’ll revolve around some other bands, it kinda works, I think.”
I have literally never met anyone else who likes...
Charles Peirce wins again
From the WJ biography:
“Many philosophers seem to have felt James was saying a person could believe, and call true, anything he or she felt convenient. Charles Peirce had an elegant answer ‘for people who say that pragmatism means believing anything one pleases. If one could believe what one pleased that would be true. But the fact is one cannot.’”
June 2010
7 posts
Just think for like two more minutes and you'll...
This is one of my favorite writing lazinesses, from Paul La Farge’s review of the new David Mitchell:
“What follows is a drama that brings to mind the galloping action of James Clavell’s Shogun: it features deception, betrayal, love, theft, war, graphic depictions of midwifery and kidney-stone removal, games of cards, billiards and go, as well as a daring raid on a mountain...
Dear contemporary American English
William James beat you to it:
“[The young William James] wrote “conversash” for “conversation,” “orflings” for “orphans,” “Bosting” for “Boston,” called his father’s new book “Substance and Shadder,” called Potsdam “Potsd-m,” said “suspish” for “suspicion,”...
William James' dad
I’m reading Robert D. Richardson’s biography of William James, which, like his biography of Emerson, is wonderful. I did not know that the James brothers’ father was such a nut, but here he is, writing one of his many self-published, completely ignored books:
“He worked at his writing table at home in full view of the family, turning out one long book after another, each a...
Distracted I Guess
I misread a sentence in this article as, “Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shitting out irrelevant information, scientists say.”
1450
“I think the last one was probably the introduction of the printed book with Gutenberg’s press in 1450. It changed the prevailing mode of thinking in society. For the first time—speaking for society—you had a technology that encouraged people to be attentive, and shielded them from distraction.”
Quotes like that are why people still need to go to graduate school. Nicholas Carr...
Caesar Salad
This is a recipe for Caesar Salad. The only reason I’m putting up a recipe is because I made this from scratch (this refers mostly to the dressing) for the first time a couple months ago, and I discovered that the difference between your normal restaurant caesar salad and the real deal is big big big. This thing is delicious, and should be made by everybody.
The reason for the...
M.I.A.
“You are only as good as your worst sentence.”
Maybe. But fuck that. Hirschberg’s profile was long overdue and completely correct. And now she is getting attacked for doing things that everyone has done in profiles since forever.
The line may have been a cheap shot, but it was not the piece’s center by any means, which everybody knows. If people weren’t such...
April 2010
9 posts
Beds
This isn’t intended as a judgment of people who don’t make their beds every day, but if you are someone who is in the habit, DON’T take a day off, even if you’re sort of rushed. It will make you feel terrible when you come home and realize that there your bed is, unmade.
Wind!
There is a stretch of the route in between my apartment and my subway stop that is always crazy with wind, which gets pretty harrowing when it rains. Because basically the risk gets really high that my umbrella will be yanked out of my hands even though the wind seems to be blowing in all directions at once/no direction at all.
Why and how does this happen? Is it something particular to cities?...
Movies
Kick-Ass turned out to be the Double Down sandwich of movies!
Both were the objects of lots of speculation right up until they became available for public consumption, at which point it turned out that very few people were actually interested in consuming them. (You could tell Sam Sifton felt really embarrassed about giving in and actually reviewing the sandwich, which is good. He should be...
Salt
Every recipe that I have for a baked good includes something like half a teaspoon of salt. What’s the deal? That’s not enough to make the flavor different. Is it a superstition thing? Because I could use that salt in other foods.
Josh you should draw this
Today, while I was eating my lunch at a deli, a guy in a nice suit and gray tie walked in. It looked like he was somewhere in his mid-40s, and it also looked like he was in pretty good shape. So it was not some post-college t-shirted slob who asked the guy behind the counter to make him a “lasagna hero,” which he explained meant a big piece of cheese lasagna in between two halves of a...
More Joe
My interest in Joe Biden isn’t just something that happened because of TV.
In the fall of 2007, my dad was coming back to Philly from D.C. He was taking the Amtrak because it’s awesome, even though I can’t ever afford to ride on it. It was kind of a weird hour, like 2:30 in the afternoon, so there weren’t many people on the platform, and eventually my dad noticed that...
Joe
Also, I’m never going to actually do this, so if somebody wants to steal this idea and make it happen, well, please do:
There should be a one-act play called “JOE.” It’s about Joe Biden. The play begins with a journalist (preferably played by Joe Biden himself, because come on there is an excellent chance that he would be into something like this) asking the Joe Biden...
Unambitious
agrammar:
But there’s also some slippage in the punk-rock politics of the thing that’s always an issue. There’s this sense — a valid sense, in a few ways — that the punk/indie ethos surrounding this conversation was part of the point: the do-it-yourself ethic, the community-building, the dovetailing of feminist dissent and punk dissent. But obviously that becomes a problem if you start feeling...
I just avoided an old Marxist at a sociology conference in Chicago, so now I’m feeling like Elif Batuman =)
March 2010
6 posts
Shopping
I was walking up Madison Ave. to get some lunch, and I noticed that whenever there’s a store on a corner that sold both men’s and women’s clothing, the women’s display was in the window on the avenue, while the men’s display was on the street. I saw maybe five stores like this? I didn’t see any that did it differently.
Anyway my hypothesis is this. If you...
Robert Walser again ... Winter
I already sent this out to a few of my friends, so sorry if you’re getting it a second time, but all this is from a two-page story called “Winter” and it is wonderful. Read this all the way through, I promise I’m not wasting your time.
“In winter the fog makes much of itself. Anyone walking in it cannot help but shiver. Only seldom does the sun honor us with its...
Sorry today is techno-paranoia day
1. I read something on a blog a few days ago (I KNOW, I’m sorry, I can’t find it now) where a technology think-tank person was complaining about the limited bandwidth of the human brain. This person hoped that we would someday come up with ways of analyzing data that surpass what the human mind can do on its own. But this is literally just what computers are supposed to do, right?...
This is what going to college was like
“‘The popo? Fuck the popo,’ said a freshman, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid disciplinary consequences, in reference to the police.”
From here.
also a question for everyone
Outside of uncritical celebrity profiles, do nonfiction/magazine/blog writers ever notice the brands someone wears for any reason other than negative ones? It’s been in a few things I’ve read the last week. The writer never makes a big deal about it. He/she just says “American Apparel polo” or “Levi shrink-to-fits” and moves on, but the point is, “Hey you...
Gogol at the Met
This thing obviously looks awesome and I hope I can gooooo…
But also, it reminded me of senior year when I had to memorize a passage of something as part of my lit general exams (I think that’s what they were called). And I picked this, from Gogol’s Dead Souls, which is still incredible:
“Entering the great hall, Chichikov had to squint his eyes for a moment, because the...
February 2010
4 posts
Don't worry about this one
This is just for my own purposes: links to stuff from the old You’re A Ghost that I would post to sometimes in college.
http://youreaghost.blogspot.com/2009/08/marching-on.html
http://youreaghost.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-am-sick-of-teaching-i-am-sick-of.html
http://youreaghost.blogspot.com/2008/02/goodbye-babylon.html
supremacy
“For if historical novels have been one literary way to make the reality of our social arrangements invisible, they haven’t been the only one. It was also in 1987 that Margaret Thatcher, as canny a cultural critic as Toni Morrison, pronounced herself tired of hearing about society’s problems and, in the wake of her triumph over the National Union of Mineworkers, took a stand...
Secretary
I watched Secretary last week, and thought it was one of the few movies I’ve seen that made a sincere, intelligent effort to be honest about sex and desire.
There was one bit that rang false, though, and it really annoyed me.
It’s the part where Maggie Gyllenhaal’s submissive-vigil (she refuses to leave her dominant lawyer-lover’s desk for days until he returns) becomes...
January 2010
4 posts
Celebrities
Sometimes very good-looking actors will talk about wishing they were less good-looking because it would allow them to play a wider range of roles. Sometimes they will express relief as they enter middle age; without everyone salivating over them all of the time, they can actually put time and effort into acting, which is probably what most of them really like doing in the first place.
Usually the...
Vampire Weekend
Here are two things I think about them:
1. The main thing about Vampire Weekend is rhythm. They’re not good at the architectural stuff that you need to be good at to write great songs, like I’m never waiting for that part of the song that I really like to come. Koenig has a great voice but he’s not using it for anything that’s especially melodic. But Chris Tomson’s...
WatchHappy New Year everyone. Please remember that the music industry is not relevant until Sir Luscious Left Foot comes out. “THIS PENMANSHIP IS SO LEGIT.”