Category: words

Messud: “In some ways, to be a writer is to stand at the side, to be the observer, to be liminal. Wittgenstein said that all philosophy is neurosis. If you’re not neurotic then you don’t even have to write anything down, you’re just busy living.” – The Guardian (UK)

For instance, take The Count of Monte Cristo. “At 1,200 pages, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas has the look of a book that might be boringly good for you. … I don’t think I’ve ever read anything with such adrenalin, awe and immersive enjoyment, aided by the zippy and vivid translation.” – Irish Times

Well … there are a lot of reasons why not, but if you’re Anne Marie Kessler in Klamath Falls, Oregon, you’re doing it to give back to your community – who also helped renovate the 1906 hotel that had been vacant before she and her husband decided to move in. “We’ve had 106 people who have volunteered labor to renovate this building. … I (could) just put out a group text and say, ‘Hey, I could use as many people as could come down this weekend,’ and we’ve had 15 people here hammering away.”- The Oregonian

“New novels from Don DeLillo and Martin Amis, two of the remaining dons of the literary scene of the 1980s, are out within a week of each other, like some last blast of “Remember when?” just before the 2020 election further propels us into a new realm of reality. Amis has written a novel so interested in Amis that its cover — a black-and-white portrait of, you guessed it, Amis — feels less like a postmodern joke and more like a warning sign. DeLillo, whose work is usually our national harbinger of future calamities, has written a disaster thriller that forgets to thrill.” – New York Magazine

“Profoundly honest and unusually articulate, at once emotionally compelling and profoundly revealing, the Babur Nama is in many ways an oddly modern text, almost Proustian in its self-awareness. It presents the uncensored fullness of the man, a human life perfectly pinned to the page in simple, direct and unpretentious prose.” – Literary Hub

“Its evolution is, in many ways, an example of a game-changing design waiting until outside factors – in this case the rise of plastics and mass-production infrastructure, and a brilliant marketeer – allowed it to achieve its full potential.” – BBC

Here’s why word trash is a problem: If language isn’t specific, it’s hard for us to connect with it—and with each other. And it’s 2020, which for some of us has been a year already devoid of physical contact. – Fast Company

Tom Comitta: “Even though these forms have existed for over a millennium, few connections have been made between the many novels and short stories that either contain a significant amount of quotations or are made up entirely of them. Considering the wide reach of literary criticism, … it’s particularly surprising that we don’t have a detailed and complex understanding of this kind of fiction. In order to start building one, I’d like to detail some of the important works and trends and to offer a possible vocabulary with which to understand them.” – Literary Hub