Variations of a Theme: The Cost of Happiness
He turned from the sight of human ignorance and human fate and the sea eating the ground we stand on, which, had he been able…
The Art of the Obituary (6): Susan Sontag
Annie Leibovitz, Susan at the House on Hedges Lane (1988), Brooklyn Museum Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) She was bookish almost from birth.…
Messages The City Wants Us To Hear
Some excerpts from Timothy “Speed” Levitch’s Speedology (2002) 1. The Fastest Way to Adventure is to Stand Still Boredom is an illusion. Boredom is the…
Only One Part of Us Is Sane
“Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and…
The Art of the Obituary (5): Ike Turner
Ike Turner (November 5, 1931 – December 12, 2007) Though his musical and entrepreneurial talent was enormous, he had been slow to break out of…
The Lover
Julia Kristeva (1987): We have lost the relative strength and security that the old moral codes guaranteed our loves either by forbidding them or determining…
The Art of the Obituary: Janet Frame
Janet Frame (August 28, 1924 - January 29, 2004) She needed ‘treatment’— electro-convulsive therapy at the Seacliff hospital in Dunedin. Every part of this therapy…
Humanity and Suffering on Craigslist
pp. 26-27 Carson McCullers, “The Ballad of the Sad Café” First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons—but the fact that it…
“What editors do for writers is mysterious, and does not, contrary to general belief, have much to do with titles and sentences and ‘changes.’…
The Art of Obituary: Anna Nicole Smith
Anna Nicole Smith (November 28, 1967 – February 8, 2007) She acted too, though it was the Breasts that stole every scene, full in Leslie Nielsen’s…
The Critic in Culture
The role of the critic in culture: guardian/gatekeeper of the gift
She cuts like a knife with the eyes of her words.
The quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be life hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
Excerpts from a Conversation with David Foster Wallace
There are four trillion bits coming at you, 99 percent of them are shit, and it’s too much work to do triage to decide.
The Art of Promotion (1)
We here at James Brown Enterprises are deeply concerned about our youth. We are not only concerned with them doing the right things but also making the right decisions in life.
An Exile from the Real World
An exile from the real world, Elvis Presley built his own world