…it seems to have hindered his capacity for self-expression. “My head was so full of words that I often had trouble forming simple sentences out loud,” he writes, “and my speech became a curious jumble of obscure words and improper syntax.” But Shea seems to have loved this experience of verbal overspill — he underwent [...]
Friday, February 22, 2008
Because it’s fresh on my mind, just having had with a friend a conversation about it — Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke — and because I seem to, it turns out, mention in passing something I’m reading without ever saying more — always meaning to, of course — always thinking I’ll come back to this [...]
It must be coming. Because that’s always the way it works, the odd word showing up again and again and again.
Roué.
First, The Long Embrace, Judith Freeman:
12/11/48 TO CHARLES MORTON, EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY: [from Raymond Chandler]
I am a very happy man. I haven’t a brain in my head, an idea on my mind, or [...]
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Also tagged Ianthe Brautigan, Judith Freeman, Katha Pollitt, Learning to Drive, Raymond Chandler, reading, roue, The Long Embrace, threes, words, You Can't Catch Death
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007
November has been so far the month of travel, first Austen, then Auburn, Alabama. (So A = travel?) Few, I imagine, go to Auburn, Alabama, if not for some sort of business or other, and in this case C and I fall into the majority (imagine that), and it was business for C that took [...]
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Also tagged Alabama, art gallery, Auburn, Cincinnati, collage, Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son, Loachapoka, Nathaniel Hawthorne, National Book Award, Richard Powers, The Atlantic Monthly, The Echo Maker, Tree of Smoke
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Around this time, October 14, 1988, to be exact, Katherine Mansfield was born (Wellington, New Zealand — see entry on the “little savage from New Zealand”), and on her 34th birthday she wrote in her journal:
Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth [...]