I read this. And then bought 10 books to have on hand to give to clients or friends who recently lost someone. Rilke does, somehow, with his poems andI read this. And then bought 10 books to have on hand to give to clients or friends who recently lost someone. Rilke does, somehow, with his poems and letters, cleft my heart with his words. I love his poetry, but god his prose is fantastic too....more
God. Reading this 20+ years after the US and it's trusty side-kick the UK invaded Iraq is hard. Clearly, the world (and especially the US, UK and IsraGod. Reading this 20+ years after the US and it's trusty side-kick the UK invaded Iraq is hard. Clearly, the world (and especially the US, UK and Israel) learned nothing in 20 years. Or perhaps, they did learn. Which is the shittiest reality of them all. Anyway, this small book contains 6 anti-war (specifically anti-2003 Iraq War) essays by: - Brian Eno - John LeCarre - Richard Dawkins - Maifa Zangana - Michael Faber I bought the book for the John LeCarre essay. I'm getting close to being a completist and wanted to grab a couple extra essays, short-stories, etc. Anyway, in for a penny, in for a pound. Which I guess is very British and very relevant to the US and UK's foreign policy. Each of these essays is a masterwork in anti-war writing. All different with different approaches, audiences, and directions; all angry. It feels VERY relevant with the UK and the US sending arms and money to Israel while more innocents are dying under us bombs and from US-made ammunition. The story goes on, the death toll increases, the enemy is inside the house....more
A bunch of essays by Rovelli that center around art, fiction, poetry, physics, and the world. These collected essays reflect Rovelli's variety of inteA bunch of essays by Rovelli that center around art, fiction, poetry, physics, and the world. These collected essays reflect Rovelli's variety of interests and underlying personal philosophy. Life is about seeking after knowledge, treating others well, and using physics to be a better philosopher and using philosophy/poetry/etc to be a better physicist. Not all the essays were of equal value. Some were beautiful and some were interesting. The knot tying these essays together was a bit looser than I would have liked, but I still enjoyed it. Just not top-shelf Rovelli. ...more
I think a lot of errors have been made my MSM trying to review this small book. They fear the last essay, but they lose the context of what he's sayinI think a lot of errors have been made my MSM trying to review this small book. They fear the last essay, but they lose the context of what he's saying in the essays before. This book works together. Essay 1: Is about the power of the word, of journalism, etc. Essay 2: Is essentially how Senegal, in the mind of Coates, his father, and other African Americans is a fantasy (the reality is not the dream that is held by many in the US). Essay 3 uses this framing to talk about 1) how the fact that MSM seldom lets Palestinians tell their own story fails all of us. We hear stories and myths about Palestine and Israel in narratives that are created by the MSM, by Israel, but almost never by the Palestinians themselves. Coates uses his own perspectives as a child of Jim Crowe era America to draw parallels with the Apartheid State that is Israel.
He also recognizes that even using that framing is limited, because despite the parallels, the Palestinian story told by him is still being framed by an outsider (a sympathetic outsider, but an outsider nonetheless). He mostly delivers what he's trying to deliver. That message, however, gets lost because a lot of Zionists aren't ready to hear the reality of what the state of Israel is doing and a lot of the old colonial nations aren't ready to hear it either, because what is happening now in Israel and Palestine is a reflection of what colonial powers have always done: take land that belonged to someone else and dehumanize those that were living there before....more
Baldwin uses a review of films relating to race to deconstruct the current race situation (in the early 1970s). This is a fantastic book and not just Baldwin uses a review of films relating to race to deconstruct the current race situation (in the early 1970s). This is a fantastic book and not just for hyper fans of Baldwin. God this man is a treasure....more
Goddam I love Zadie Smith. These short essays were all written shortly after the Pandemic in 2020. Zadie was living in New York, teaching at NYU I belGoddam I love Zadie Smith. These short essays were all written shortly after the Pandemic in 2020. Zadie was living in New York, teaching at NYU I believe, and these snapshots and vignettes evoke her experience and her thoughts about isolation, family, writing, America, racism, healthcare, etc. The thing I love about Zadie is her prose seems effortless. It is like watching a world-class ice skater warm up by executing impossible turns. She is my generation, but different enough (gender, nationality, skin color) that I seem to understand the shared spaces we have, but also through her writing, I am confronted with my blindspots and my comfort. She is a global treasure and one of those handful of writers who once you read one book, you buy all of them so you can experience the whole range of what she is as a writer and a person....more
"And our children's vanishing encounters with nature represent a loss of primary experience." - Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks
"If children abandon 'the s"And our children's vanishing encounters with nature represent a loss of primary experience." - Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks
"If children abandon 'the sandlots and creek beds, the alleys and woodlands', if 'children are not permitted...to be adventurers and explorers as children', then 'what will become of the world of adventure, stories, of literature itself?'" - Michael Chabon, The Wilderness of Childhood
"I was reminded, too, of Emerson's beautiful description of language as 'a city to the building of which every person has brought a stone.'" - Emerson, quoted by Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks
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Inspired by the removal of several nature words in the Oxford Junior Dictionary: "acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup..." The list was tragic. The thesis of Robert Macfarlane's book is we love the things we name, and if we lose the name for things in our language, our ability to care for nature and wilderness diminished. This book is a signpost pointing to books where the language of nature is strong. Chapters are essentially essays where Robert Macfarlane is able to sing a love letter to fantastic books like Nan Shepherd's In the Cairngorms, Roger Deakon's Waterlog: A Swimmer's Journey Through Britain, J.A. Baker's The Peregrine, Richard Skelton's Landings, Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, Richard Jefferies' Nature Near London, Clarince Ellis's The Pebbles On The Beach, and John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra.
Macfarlane's love for these books and topics is so rich it is hard to not love them back. I finished this book and purchased three more. It was infective. Just like the glossaries that divide the chapters. In the glossary, Macfarlane include nature words in danger of being lost. The words mostly are focused on Great Britain, but when this book was first published it inspired readers to send in their own local lexicons of nature. It really is beautifully constructed and for a book organic, which structurally is nearly perfect....more
"The exhausted athletes dive in, like on their backs, stare at the ceiling, and float with victory, or marinate in defeat." - John McPhee, Wimbledon
[im"The exhausted athletes dive in, like on their backs, stare at the ceiling, and float with victory, or marinate in defeat." - John McPhee, Wimbledon
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This picture/essay/table book on Wimbledon consists basically of three parts. Photos by Alfred Eisendstaedt of Wimbledon in 1971 and two essays written by John McPhee about Wimbledon 1970. The essays are: 1. "Hoad on Court 5" and 2. "Twynam of Wimbledon."
The photos are ok. Not Eisenstaedt's best. There weren't many that came close to top shelf Eisenstaedt (his Oppenheimer, Sophia Loren, & Kennedy portraits; Mt Rushmore; the Drum Major; Ice Skating Waiter, St. Moritz; or his iconic V-J day in Times Square). This man is a genius, but whoever turned his photos of Wimbledon into a book enlarged many of the photos beyond their resolution. Also, at the time Eisenstaedt was 73, he might have aged out of sports photography. I'm not saying you can't be a good sports photographer when you are your sunset years, but I'm not sure the camera, the man, and the sport were rightly connected here.
As far as the McPhee writing goes the first "Essay Hoad on Court 5" gives a nice overview of the game and a really good survey of Wimbledon in the early 70s as the game, and Wimbledon really started to take off. This was still largely age of wooden rackets and there were still some amateurs in the game, and yes money, there was always money attached to tennis, but it hadn't quite hit the level it would later take in 10 years. The snapshot of 1970/1971 is nice because that really was a time of dynamic shifts in the game. The essay itself is ok. It was good McPhee, but not something I would send someone to to introduce them to John McPhee. It isn't top shelf or 2nd shelf McPhee. He never mails it in, but if he did, it might look a bit like this.
His second essay "Twynam of Wimbledon" centers on Robert Twynam. The book is dedicated to the man and this essay is more classic McPhee. He looks at the man who looks at the grass. The man tells McPhee about the grass and McPhee tells us about the grass. In the course of hanging out with these two gentle souls (Twynam and a nearly invisible McPhee) we get another perspective on the game, on Wimbledon, and a peek at all the other things floating over the net. I liked this essay. This is more what you expect, with no surprises but it is McPhee in his element. He likes people. Likes the deep dive....more
Not her best, but for a ... "rest of the unpublished"... it holds up really well. Narrowed, sorta, by Joan's writings about writing, it all feels wellNot her best, but for a ... "rest of the unpublished"... it holds up really well. Narrowed, sorta, by Joan's writings about writing, it all feels well done. Her writing is always good. The arrangement doesn't hold any wrong notes. Her take on newspapers, etc., seems even more spot on today. But at heart this book is a "How writing is done" book. But built on essays and works published previously that focus on parts of the writing process....more
"In dreams, in books, in pieces of music, in paintings, in beings that we love, as on hiking trails, there are sometimes scattered signs of gratitude "In dreams, in books, in pieces of music, in paintings, in beings that we love, as on hiking trails, there are sometimes scattered signs of gratitude such as compose a traveler's joy. They are fleeting, like sand, unstable, like sand can be, innumerable... They attest to the presence of something else, as do the shadows that reveal what's in the light, as do the efforts of the dead who haunt the living." -- Jean Frémon, Proustiennes
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Beautifully translated by Brian Evenson, this book is light; a small series of meditations floating around Proust; a bath-worth of short thoughts on Proust and his ideas, his contemporaries. Frémon jumps from thought to beautiful thought on memory, art, complexity, time, and life.
I need to let this one soak and comeback to some of my favorite parts. Too late to arrange my disjoined thoughts properly....more
"It is all heartbreak, at least if you've given over your heart." - Toni Jensen, Carry
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Certainly this is a memoir. Certainly it is a collection o"It is all heartbreak, at least if you've given over your heart." - Toni Jensen, Carry
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Certainly this is a memoir. Certainly it is a collection of essays. But Toni Jensen's book is way more complicated than that. Its prose beats with a poetic cadence. It is poetic both in its construction and its precision. Toni uses repetition to create almost a chant, a heartbeat, a lyrical prayer to tie the book's themes together. She is reporting on the familiar. That is the scary thing. We have, through lazy language and a shared dissimulation, ignored the violence that is our history and our present. We talk about it. But we also talk around it. We like to pretend this violence is exceptional. We like to feel like it is not the rule. Jensen shows us, however, through her experience and her refusal to buy into the familiar tropes, the signs that exist (both literal and figurative). We are a violent country. We have a gun problem.
One of the ways she ties this book's essays together is through her use of Webster's Dictionary. Her use of the dictionary does a couple things. First, through multiple definitions for a word, Toni is able to link the various themes in the book. She also uses the dictionary as a way to show that this is a memoir (of essays) as much about the language of violence as it is about those who are hurt by violence and those who do the hurting. We need to name things well. We need to be aware when the naming of things is being used to obfuscate, to misdirect, to disengage.
Finally, and more subtly, Toni is showing us how language is one of the ways we can protect ourselves. Words matter. Stories matter. Perspective matter. Giving voice to those who are hurt in our country matters. A dictionary isn't going to solve every problem, but it might just stop one bullet. Language might give one girl a refuge....more
"But I must not allow impious comment to get mixed up with sacred fact." - Ian Fleming, "Macao", in Thrilling Cities
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Having read all of Fleming's"But I must not allow impious comment to get mixed up with sacred fact." - Ian Fleming, "Macao", in Thrilling Cities
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Having read all of Fleming's Bond novels, I considered myself finished with Fleming too. But two things happened in 2020. I discovered several of his nonfiction works and Covid-19 seriously limited my ability to scratch my travel itch. So, when I discovered Fleming's 1963 travel book, I was intrigued. In 1959, the Sunday Times hired Ian Fleming to fly around the world in 30-days and write about several cities on his route. He wrote about:
1. Hong Kong 2. Macao 3. Tokyo 4. Honolulu 5. Los Angeles and Las Vegas 6. Chicago 7. New York
His reporting was so popular that they asked him to do it again, but in Europe, so in 1960 he wrote about:
8. Hamburg 9. Berlin 10. Vienna 11. Geneva 12. Naples 13. Monte Carlo
As you would expect from Ian Fleming, the writing is good, a bit off the normal travel tome path, and a bit sexist and a tad racist (the early 60s and late 50s were not a high point in cultural nuance, and Fleming was the high ground of that period anyway). When the collection was published in the early 60s, it ended up being almost a travel guide for the Playboy set (a Baedeker for boobs and booze).
Ian Fleming isn't interested in beaches, museums and the usual tourist haunts. He wants to go to clubs, meet with writers, adventurers, actors, and mobsters. He is curious. He is occasionally insightful, and he is often hilarious. The weakest sections of each essay is the "Incidental Intelligence" Fleming includes about each cities best hotels, restaurants, and clubs. Obviously, these didn't age very well. But, in an age where nobody wants Americans traveling anywhere and we are locked down and socially distancing, you could do worse than examine a couple exotic cities through the eyes of Ian Fleming 60 years ago....more
"Solitude is a fluid concept, ranging from the depths of loneliness to the saint's mystic rapture." - Stephen Batchelor, The Art of Solitude
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An "Solitude is a fluid concept, ranging from the depths of loneliness to the saint's mystic rapture." - Stephen Batchelor, The Art of Solitude
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An interesting exploration of solitude. Lots of potential, but I'm not sure Batchelor's experiment (the collaged structure) worked well, so minus one star. Also, a large chunk of this small book is imported from Montaigne, so I'm not sure how much of this is more than an extended greatest hits collected by Batchelor on the topic of solitude. Integrated into his sections on Montaigne, Vermeer, and the Buddha, Batchelor inserts his experiences with solitude, peyote, Ayahuasca, and other hallucinogenics. Those sections seem to capture my entire experience with the book: a bit of insight, accompanied by sweats, nausea, and the need for ginger candy to get the bad taste out of my mouth. OK. Maybe it isn't that bad. It just wasn't that great either.
Reading this makes the experience seem entirely too negative. I wasn't unhappy to re-read a lot of Montaigne. The guy is my JAM. Also, the chapters on Vermeer were pretty damn good too....more
"Men whose lives are built on the ego can die of any painful disease but one--they cannot endure the dissolution of their own ego, for then nothing is"Men whose lives are built on the ego can die of any painful disease but one--they cannot endure the dissolution of their own ego, for then nothing is left with which to face emotion, nothing but the urge to grovel at the enemy's feet." - Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago
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It is closing in on the 2020 primaries and all to soon we will be watching at least ONE party conventions of 2020. Makes me look back on some crazy times in American politics. Perhaps, the only years within recent memory to rival 2016 and 2000 would be 1968. It was the middle of the Vietnam war, MLK was assassinated, Johnson had dropped out and Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. American was bat shit. And nobody captures batshit better than Norman Mailer (well, maybe Hunter S. Thompson).
I've recently come back to Mailer after an intermission of 20 years. He is a writer you need to take in small doses, but as usually happens, I read over 1000 pages of Mailer and discover like alcohol he might just be no good for me, but maybe just one last book. I do tend to prefer his nonfiction writing to his fiction, so this book was a delight. One can still enjoy something that isn't healthy, right?...more
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