December 2009
8 posts
3 tags
but he was a sociopath
Because of the pollen, every spring a book makes me delirious. In 2007 it was Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night.
Journey’s hero, Bardamu, supports himself by hanging out in the French army during World War I, playing colonial overlord in a remote swamp, standing in an assembly line, and manning an insane asylum. The disgust and jokes don’t quit.
I considered...
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I liked He's Just Not That Into You (film)
it’s no nonsense
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which is not to say Americans should try to write...
Two good Christmas presents, a book and an American Apparel circle scarf.
Last night I wondered how a novella’s first sentence could strike me as bad and promising at the same time. (“The chill of suspicion and incomprehension came between me and humankind when I was sixteen, at the time of my high-school exams.”) After finishing the story and gazing at my cat I’ve...
“The chill of suspicion and incomprehension came between me and humankind when I...”
– first sentence of The Chill. If an American had written this book I’d chuck it across the room after reading the seventh word. But the author is Italian so I cannot wait to see where this goes! (Don’t know why that is.)
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here's to our nutbag friends
To help myself feel open-minded, I often read right wing cultural criticism. Unfortunately I perceive most of it as insane, which throws my open-mindedness into question. But in the past few days I’ve found two rational right wing essays:
How Pedophilia Lost Its Cool shows that we vilify adult-teenager sex much more now than we did even ten years ago, and pegs the trend to...
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“Americans continue to cobble together Mr. Potato Head-like spiritual identities...”
– Charles Blow