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Mourning Salinger: Guest post by Lisa Battiston

February 6th, 2010 by AlexisV
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salinger1Last week, my parents both sent me separate Sorry for Your Loss e-mails. My brother called to say how regretful he was and friends of mine were messaging me the same sentiment. I even had two ex-boyfriends text me individual condolences.

Y’see… J.D. Salinger died.

I’m not a Salinger scholar. I’m not a Salinger historian. I’m just a fan. A silly little fan girl. Apparently a lot of the people I know were aware of it and, when Salinger passed away, I had friends and family telling me I was the first person they thought of, wanted to tell me they were sorry “your boy” was gone,” they knew he was “your favorite author,” R.I.P., all of it. My mother even said, “He’ll be immortalized for your lifetime – at least on your skin.”

This is, hands down, the only kind or positive thing my mother has ever said about any of my various tattoos, but she was referring to two in particular – I have the word “Rye” on my lower back (guess which Salinger book that’s for!) and the number 9 between my shoulder blades (for Nine Stories).
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A Fan in a Yankee’s Court: the Mark Twain House

February 4th, 2010 by AlexisV
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I have always been interested to see, up close, where writers worked and lived. Pablo Neruda’s house in Santiago, Chile, for instance, demonstrates his obsession with boats and the sea. All of the ceilings are low to the ground and the windows shaped like portholes. The house’s title “La Chascona,” comes from Neruda’s nickname for his third wife, so given because of her wild hair.

Then there is William Faulkner’s house in Oxford, Mississippi, with its beautiful old trees, its smokehouse and stables, and the modest study with walls covered on each side by Faulkner’s hand-scribbled notes.

Don't adjust the pixels on your screen, folks. This Twain is made of LEGOS.

Don't adjust the pixels on your screen, folks. This Twain is made of LEGOS.


A two-hour drive from Boston (by modern horseless carriage!), Mark Twain’s house in Hartford, Connecticut, is where he spent his most productive years as a publisher and writer (before bankruptcy forced him and an all-female brood to move to Europe, ’cause “it was cheaper”). After two restorations, the place looks better than ever and throws its doors open to the public seven days a week.

And as it happens, this is quite the year for Mark Twain fanboys to make the trek. The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death, the 175th anniversary of his birth (both occasions coincided with the celestial appearance of Haley’s comet), and the 125th anniversary of the book that Ernest Hemingway deemed America’s greatest: “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
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Cupid’s Roundup of Pre-Valentine’s Day Literary Events

February 3rd, 2010 by AlexisV
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The month of February is practically bursting out of its winter corset with chances to see interesting writers in person. And best of all, these stimulating (intellectually and perhaps otherwise) date opportunities are free! Now what could be more attractive than thriftiness?
book-date-poster
Here’s our selection of Boston’s best upcoming readings and lectures:
TODAY
6:30 pm, First Parish Church in Cambridge
DANIELLE OFRI, Medicine in Translation: Journeys with My Patients

THIS FRIDAY
6 pm, Porter Square Books
LEN BERMAN, Greatest Moments in Sports

MONDAY, FEB 8
7 pm, Harvard Bookstore
JOHN CALLAHAN and ADAM BRADLEY discuss Ralph Ellison’s posthumously published novel, Three Days Before the Shooting
Presented by the Harvard Book Store and the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research.
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On National Character, Pt. 2

January 24th, 2010 by Andrew
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Coincidentally, a few days after I wrote my post comparing British and American book covers last month, I went home to Britain for the holidays — and was struck by another subtle but (to me, anyway) interesting difference between the publishing industry in the two countries: reading in Britain is a lot more “lowbrow” than reading in America.
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James Joyce and John Coltrane… Separated at Birth? (Guest Post by Jeremy Cort)

January 23rd, 2010 by AlexisV
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What interests me in reading bad reviews of this novel (the ones, admittedly, I really like to read) is how upset people get with Joyce about writing it in the first place, as though in so doing he was only trying to stick his finger in as many eyes as possible. Those who rate the novel poorly also like to make claims that people who love Ulysses are just pretending to “get it” or trying to appear intelligent.

Well, I pretend all kinds of things, and I do attempt to come off as intelligent, but this book really is a sheer masterpiece and a monument to the human intellect. It’s better than the Bible, because one person wrote it. If aliens ever land, it is one of the things that we can hand them as absolute proof of our artistry and brilliance. Ulysses, like all great art, justifies mankind. And it’s more fun than any board game you have ever or will ever play. It’s the joy of language ecstatically written. Stop seeking symmetries with Greek mythology—this will never help you get what’s going on.

Let me stand next to your BUCK MULLIGAN.

Let me stand next to your BUCK MULLIGAN.


When you listen to Jimi Hendrix play guitar or Coltrane play sax, do you attempt to trace influences or symmetries with previous musicians to enjoy what they are doing? No, at least not for the sheer visceral enjoyment of the music. Dig on Jimi shredding strings or Coltrane blowing sax. It’s the same for Joyce’s Ulysses. It is a marvelous and quite interactive experience. Relax. Untense those muscles. Joyce wants you to play with him. He just rolled you a ball. Roll it back. Try again. It’s fun. You’ll see.
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im in ur head ruinin ur grammurz

January 22nd, 2010 by Katherine
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im on ur couch readin ur classics

i can has proze?

Hai, mai name iz k8e, and im addicted 2 lolcat. 1m 2 31337 4 u. And I can’t deal with it anymoar. I sincerely hope that I am not alone in this problem.

My boyfriend and I started talking (and typing) in lolspeak because it was lolarious. He lives far away and we found over time that lolspeak immeasurably enhanced (imbued with lolariousness!) our otherwise banal conversations, conversations about what was had for dinner or what we did with ourselves during the day (oh you know, went to the gym, patted Bobo cat, read for a while), conversations that would not be had in any other context than that of the long distance relationship. Banality encased in lolspeak became defamiliarized and therefore bearable, endearing even - it became a kind of cryptographic game with which to pass the months we spent apart. However, I have noticed a decline in my ability to construct coherent, grammatically correct sentences and intellectual thought. [Read more →]

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George Saunders and Ha Jin

January 17th, 2010 by Brooks
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ani_jin_saunders George Saunders and Ha Jin read earlier today at Boston Public Library, which was was pretty impressive. Don’t despair if you missed it—Saunders has three Boston readings scheduled for February (link), and I assume Ha Jin will read again at some point, since he teaches at BU. Though they differ stylistically, both readers share a sense of humor and a love of literature, with emphasis (at least today) on “The Russians.” One of the funniest lines from the story Ha Jin read, entitled “The Bane of the Internet,” went something like: “Loaning her money would be like throwing a meatball at a dog. Nothing would come back.” I was also pleased to be able to hear Saunders say “dick-in-the-ear butt-creamery” as he read part of his story “Victory Lap” that appeared in The New Yorker back in October.
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Slower than Molasses in January

January 15th, 2010 by Katherine
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Disaster!

Disaster!

Today marks ninety-first anniversary of the Boston Molasses Disaster. On January 15, 1919, near the North End waterfront, an enormous tank of molasses, molasses swollen and liquescent from the unseasonably warm weather, exploded. Twenty-one people were killed and one-hundred fifty injured as a wave of molasses swept over the area moving at speeds approaching thirty-five mph. If you want to get your local history on, you can visit Lagone Park, located where the tank once stood, and nearby Puopolo Park, which features a small commemorative plaque near the entrance. [Read more →]

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On “Being A Writer”

January 7th, 2010 by Andrew
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Since Joe asked, the list of things I did while at home for the holidays was pretty much the same as his, except substitute “drinking” and “shopping” for “thinking” and “playing Flash games”. But if that seems to put me in agreement with him about the relative weight writing should occupy in a “writer’s” life, the truth is a little more complicated, because yes, I also did some writing over the break, and yes, I think that’s kind of important.
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How I Spent My Winter Break “Not Being A Writer”

January 5th, 2010 by Joe
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...but the internet's on!

...but the internet's on!

I’ve heard it said that writers should need to write, and not just want to like any amateur with an idea and a blog. In fact Bukowski has a nice poem espousing that very idea. But here’s the thing: I think that idea is a bunch of crap put forth by pretentious assholes like Bukowski so as to distract us from the fact that many authors either aren’t very good at anything other than writing or are crazy.
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