true dat

Posted on October 27, 2008 - Filed Under

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Marilynne Robinson in an interview in The Paris Review
INTERVIEWER
You’ve also written that Americans tend to avoid contemplating larger issues. What is it that we’re afraid of?
ROBINSON
People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in [...]

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Please see Kim :)

Posted on August 15, 2008 - Filed Under

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I got a glimpse of this walking the dog–someone was kind enough to upload the photo to the web for me. (CRED)

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TEV in SF tonight

Posted on June 19, 2008 - Filed Under

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Mark Sarvas reads from Harry, Revised at Cafe Royale tonight.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

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John Updike: Early Sabermetrician?

Posted on March 31, 2008 - Filed Under

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Joe Posnanski sez:

I’ve always thought that the patron saint of “clutch hitting is a myth” is not Bill James at all, but rather the author John Updiike. In his famous, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” story about Ted Williams final game, he wrote:
“For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot [...]

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AL Kennedy interview

Posted on January 29, 2008 - Filed Under

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AL Kennedy gets The Bat Segundo treatment.

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that’s important…to be tasteful

Posted on January 7, 2008 - Filed Under

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“I want it to be a household name, where people start when they’re looking for an author, a book or what people are saying about current ideas or events,” said Madison over lunch at Absinthe, a few doors down from Redroom’s tasteful offices in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley. “Because we have the writers, we have [...]

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then there were three

Posted on November 9, 2007 - Filed Under

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1. Texarkana
2. Michiana
3. Kerouaciana

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better chatter?

Posted on October 12, 2007 - Filed Under

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Joe Morgan or James Patterson?
I like who JP seems to follow JM’s MO of making an assertion and then following up with a question encouraging you to “stay tuned”. (Part of the blame falls on “R. Johnson:” for confusing the situation with a multi-part question)
Q: Why is it that the leading protagonist of a mystery/thriller [...]

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David Leavitt in Berkeley (and San Francisco)

Posted on September 16, 2007 - Filed Under

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UPDATE: I see he’ll also be in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 18th.
My interest has been piqued for David Levitt’s The Indian Clerk after a week of coverage at The Elegant Variation. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, unfortunately. Now I’ll just have to wait for the paperback.
Monday, September 17, 7:00 PM [...]

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rules, random

Posted on September 7, 2007 - Filed Under

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hearing Coltrane on the bus in KC

Okkervil River at The Independent in San Francisco playing the alternate version of Our Life Is Not A Movie, or Maybe that Conan O’Brien BANNED.

George Saunders talking Twain at maudnewton.com:
MN: You’re stranded on a desert island and for entertainment you’re allowed only twigs, stones, native birds and rodents, and [...]

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It’s kind of dangerous to be an M.C.

Posted on August 11, 2007 - Filed Under

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Indeed, because an earlier productive optimum means that a writer can die younger without loss to his or her ultimate reputation, poets exhibit a life expectancy, across the globe and through history, about a half dozen years less than prose writers do.

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Kitchen 2.0

Posted on April 19, 2007 - Filed Under

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Finally, an “Internet Appliance” for the people!

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Omaha Blues

Posted on February 8, 2007 - Filed Under

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I’m about halfway through the paperback of former NY Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld’s Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop. So far, so good -though Omaha doesn’t play many roles in this memoir other than being the place Lelyveld defines himself as being from (no small role, though) - a memory of being from somewhere [...]

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Burn ‘em (or don’t become famous)

Posted on January 25, 2007 - Filed Under

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A large collection of Willa Cather’s letters have been donated to the University of Nebraska (despite her instructions for them to never be reprinted - which I guess is slightly different). This article gives a few revelations here and there including that “She had written the epilogue of “Sapphira and the Slave Girl” five years [...]

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Lost & Found

Posted on January 23, 2007 - Filed Under

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The Gaurdian reports “The novellist Ian McEwan has discovered that a bricklayer is the older brother he never knew he had, following the man’s quest to uncover his roots.”, but the real juicy part is in the correction: “The novelist Ian McEwan was educated in a state school, not a private one”.

I give it [...]

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bring back dick lit?

Posted on January 9, 2007 - Filed Under

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The Rake, in excellent form, on “confessional fatherhood”:
Take, for example, Pollack*. His shtick has been consistently clownish, but you have to remember that he’s the very special scold who came out a few years ago against writerly post-9/11 pontification on the War on Terror. To be specific, he told everyone to shut the [...]

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Sounds like a Par-Tay

Posted on December 1, 2006 - Filed Under

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Bring on the clowns.
Saturday, the Omaha Public Library will pay homage to one of Nebraska’s greatest writers when it celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Willa Cather Library, 1905 S. 44th St.
The public is invited to attend the celebration from 2 to 4 p.m. Cake, cookies, punch and coffee will be served. Two clowns also [...]

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Can’t Hear it on the Radio

Posted on October 26, 2006 - Filed Under

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On the one hand, writers:
The real writers, you don’t even know them. The only writers that you hear about are fake fucks. All those guys are real peanut. Most writers that are real won’t take shit from no one. In other words, we’re free. In order to be a real artist, you have to be [...]

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and they didn’t so he died

Posted on October 25, 2006 - Filed Under

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By way of Books, Inq, I see today is the late John Berryman’s birthday. Since Sgt. Schultz knows more about poets than I do, I admit not knowing about him until a Hold Steady show in San Diego last year. But better late than never, no?
the devil and john berryman took a walk together
they ended [...]

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