Category Archives: Life

Perfectly Reasonable

The headline of the obituary in the New York Times labelled Salinger a “literary recluse”, which is true enough (though the same paper recently reported that he was a perfectly charming fixture around town, “who arrived early to church suppers, nodded hello while buying a newspaper at the general store and wrote a thank-you note to the fire department after it extinguished a blaze and helped save his papers and writings”). Yet many of his wishes were perfectly reasonable. It is normal not to want journalists appearing on your doorstep, or family members or ex-lovers to publish memoirs about you. However unlikely it is that he ever achieved peace or normalcy, he had every right to seek both.

—Bradley Freedman

Time for Books

Just about everyone I know complains about the same thing when they’re being honest—including, maybe especially, people whose business is reading and writing. They mourn the loss of books and the loss of time for books. It’s no less true of me, which is why I’m trying to place a few limits on the flood of information that I allow into my head.
…
There’s no way for readers to be online, surfing, e-mailing, posting, tweeting, reading tweets, and soon enough doing the thing that will come after Twitter, without paying a high price in available time, attention span, reading comprehension, and experience of the immediately surrounding world. The Internet and the devices it’s spawned are systematically changing our intellectual activities with breathtaking speed, and more profoundly than over the past seven centuries combined. It shouldn’t be an act of heresy to ask about the trade-offs that come with this revolution. In fact, I’d think asking such questions would be an important part of the job of a media critic.

—George Packer

A Luxury

Somewhere along the way, though, [reading] has become a luxury. Something I promise myself, if I just – finish – those – fifteen – tasks – first. … I have somehow lost the ability to say ‘yes this is something I need to do’ and so I barely get in a guilty twenty minutes or so to read a chapter before going to do something else.

Books I really really want to read, books I was so excited about that I pre-ordered them to get them early, are lying around unread, or partially read, stacking up against the walls and the chairs. Luxury, my brain tells me. Not now, my brain tells me.

I’m beginning to suspect that my brain and I are not on the same page.

—Tansy Rayner Roberts

Living Dialogic Threads

The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance, it cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue. After all, the utterance arises out of this dialogue as a continuation of it and as a rejoinder to it.

—Mikhail M. Bakhtin
in The Bakhtin Reader (1994, p. 76)

Your Reality

What you do from day to day ultimately becomes your reality. So it got to the point when, even though I was writing The Harmony Silk Factory, I started to think of myself as an attorney. That was the moment I realized I had to stop.

—Tash Aw


Sleep, eat, procrastinate, and write

A friend who just finished writing a(n excellent) book in a short period of time says you have to ignore your brain when it tells you it’s done for the day. You may think you can’t keep going, but if you push on, what comes out will be even better. The next day, do the same. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Also, no socializing. Apart from whatever job pays the bills, do nothing but sleep, eat, procrastinate, and write.

—Maud Newton

A profound connection to more than one place

I think we need a better way of thinking about citizenship and what it means. I see no reason why a person must be limited to either being Canadian or Haitian – an individual is capable of having a profound connection to more than one place. Perhaps the world would be a more tolerant and peaceful place if all people were connected to many different communities rather than feeling one nation had to be prioritized over all others.

—Evelyn Miller

(in comments on Globe & Mail story)

I don’t feel I’ve earned the right to do anything else until it’s done

I feel like I’m putting more weight on this piece of writing than I should … It’s like I don’t feel I’ve earned the right to do anything else until it’s done– I’m not allowed to return e-mails, to go have lunch, to do anything except the bare bones of what I have to do until it’s finished.  I want to have news to tell people.  I’m tired of saying I’m working on stuff, I want to say I was working on something but I have finished and here is what is happening with it.  I want a reason to e-mail people, with this piece of writing, to say, hey, I’m pretty pleased with it, take a look if you have a chance, would love your thoughts.  I feel like I used to finish things more often than I do lately.

—Jeremy Blachman