Happy Weekend from Plastic World
It’s not as if anyone is clamoring for more family photos, but I figured I should mention that from now on the ancestry posts will appear intermittently, if at all.
For a year and a half, all of my photos and newspaper articles and official documents must remain sealed, along with my composition notebooks and paperwork, [...]
Urban Librarians Unite (third Tuesday of every month)
A couple years ago, in email that the Telegraph’s Peter Robins recently called “a marvelous blast” of “municipal librarian machismo,” an old friend excoriated me for criticizing the New York Public Library.
This friend, the amazing Christian Zabriskie, moved to Brooklyn last year and now works as a children’s/young adult reference librarian at the main branch [...]
A bedtime story to soften the nightmare of the Bush years
Goodnight Bush: An Unauthorized Parody depicts three lines of cocaine next to GWB’s bed. They slowly disappear, one by one.
Rudy Wurlitzer regretfully declines the invitation to tap dance on your rubber raft
“I think my great handicap is my insistence on freedom,” Dawn Powell once wrote. “I require it. So I cannot make the suave adjustments to a successful writer’s life — right people, right hospitality, right gestures, because I want to be free.” Rudolph Wurlitzer, like many fine writers, could say the same.
The [...]
McClellan tell-all
Press Secretary McClellan’s Iraq War policy announcements seemed like steaming piles of horseshit because they were.
Evoking Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic world
“A little fog, a little drizzle — those are the good days.” Charles McGrath explores the logistics of filming The Road. (Via.)
Roethke’s 100th birthday
For the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roethke’s birth, NPR visited the poet’s childhood home in Saginaw.
Brooklyn’s mid-century South Florida wormhole
Walking up Ocean Parkway has always felt a little like being in Miami north of South Beach on Collins. I figured the sensation would dissipate once I moved there.
Three months later, though, despite all the red brick and Northeastern foliage, it still seems like I might stroll a couple blocks toward the park and [...]
Vidal at 82
His father had three testicles. Rumors of his love child may be true. At 82, Gore Vidal retains the power to entertain and surprise.
The Smart Set: Lauren Cerand’s weekly events
The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled and posted by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30 pm, and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please send details to Ms. Cerand at lauren [at] maudnewton.com [...]
Writing classes: the new mental hospitals?
Hanif Kureishi likens creative writing courses to mental hospitals, saying they foster false hopes and shooting rampages.
Grammar and punctuation vigilantes
Armed with Sharpies, erasers and righteous indignation, two apostles of the apostrophe … crusade to rid the world of bad signs. (Via.)
Follow Pinky’s bookish road trip
Carolyn Kellogg’s literary road trip takes her on a tour of New Orleans with my pal Pia. Other highlights: my fave Tally coffee shop & Gwenda’s Lexington.
Mouth guards over Manhattan, or a bruxist’s special day
On the anniversary of my entry into the world, someone has given me the opportunity to engage in one of my favorite pastimes: Bitching about my teeth.
“[A]t least a quarter of my friends in New York grind their teeth,” said the book blogger Maud Newton, who has blogged about her nightguard (as has Today [...]
On Andrew Sean Greer’s latest, and recommendations generally
For me, one of the pleasures of reading a good book is trying to figure out afterward which of my friends to recommend it to.
One thing’s for sure: I won’t be pressing my copy of Andrew Sean Greer’s The Story of a Marriage on Jessa. But maybe Chris, maybe Emma? It’s [...]