I. AM. WRITNG.
His head began to rip and tear as his pain grew the whole world began to shake. Not sure what to the other Urges tried to help. Finally Ignis took an apparatus and applied his skull open and out of the skull sprang Cerebra fully grown. This was the end of Memory but the beginning of Magnus' wisdom. Due to her birth she had full dominion over the brain and the devices attached. Facebook. Twitter. Recommend Me?
The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and magic.
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (via mwfogleman)
Top 5 novels:
1. The Master and Margarita.
Always.
Coralie Bickford-Smith (whose work I’ve mentioned before) has a new set of cover designs coming out this November for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books. They make me feel faint with mindless greed. I don’t even like Tender is the Night, but I still want that book (via).
Outside the Whale
Rushdie vs. Orwell
Every man’s memory is his private literature.
Aldous Huxley (via libraryland)
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
Flannery O’Connor reading (intently) as a child.
Haruki Murakami! Norwegian Wood (2010) Teaser (via filmsmash2)
The Best Magazine Articles Ever
I know that is a lofty title, but it’s true. Some of these articles I read in class; others, out of personal intrest. Many I couldn’t resist. AND THEY’RE OVER ONE HUNDRED ARTICLES! Each and everyone worth reading. My favorites include:
David Foster Wallace, “Federer As Religious Experience.” The New York Times, Play Magazine, August 20, 2006.
David Foster Wallace, “Consider the Lobster.” Gourmet Magazine, Aug 2004.
Neal Stephenson, “Mother Earth, Mother Board: Wiring the Planet.” Wired, December 1996. On laying trans-oceanic fiber optic cable.
Gay Talese, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” Esquire, April 1966.
Ron Rosenbaum, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box.” Esquire, October 1971. The first and best account of telephone hackers, more amazing than you might believe.
Susan Orlean, “Orchid Fever.” The New Yorker, January 23, 1995. Which is what the movie Adaptation was based on.
I’ve never read Eat, Pray, Love … will wait for the movie … but I keep coming back to this video.
This is def one of my fav TED videos!
Writer Hannah Arendt’s grave
