litblog skippy-dipping
A bit of this, a pinch of that.
I found on Languor Management that I could sign up to read by email on Daily Lit. You can choose from a limited but choice list of classic authors and books, sign up, and then receive emails at your chosen pace (daily, only on weekdays, etc.) that will take you through, for instance, Gogol's Dead Souls, or Emily Dickenson's poems. I've signed up for Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell--I've always meant to read something by her and now I can, in 322 installments. (Psst, Gina--they have The Beautiful and the Damned.)
Maud Newton has a nice Hemingway quote from his Paris Review interview, now out in a new book of PR interviews, which I'll requote, since I can't figure out how to link to the post itself:
It is very bad for a writer to talk about how he writes. He writes to be read by the eye and no explanations or dissertations should be necessary. You can be sure that there is much more there than will be read at any first reading and having made this it is not the writer’s province to explain it or to run guided tours through the more difficult country of his work.
I've recently found Jenny Diski's blog, Biology of the Worst Kind. She's one of my favorite writers in the London Review of Books, and also, she is a good friend of Doris Lessing's (a brilliant recommendation, for me; not unlike having known Virginia Woolf; not quite, but in the ballpark). She's got a good post currently on being read, after you've written.
And here is a very funny piece by Ian Frazier in the online NYer on the dangers of book addiction (found courtesy of Dorothy W). Here's a quote:
If every American back in 1950 had quit buying novels and invested money in high-yield bonds, today we would be looking at a savings surplus of several trillion dollars, and Social Security would not be in the mess it’s in.
If only my parents had stopped buying me books for my birthday, I'd be a rich woman today.
I found on Languor Management that I could sign up to read by email on Daily Lit. You can choose from a limited but choice list of classic authors and books, sign up, and then receive emails at your chosen pace (daily, only on weekdays, etc.) that will take you through, for instance, Gogol's Dead Souls, or Emily Dickenson's poems. I've signed up for Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell--I've always meant to read something by her and now I can, in 322 installments. (Psst, Gina--they have The Beautiful and the Damned.)
Maud Newton has a nice Hemingway quote from his Paris Review interview, now out in a new book of PR interviews, which I'll requote, since I can't figure out how to link to the post itself:
It is very bad for a writer to talk about how he writes. He writes to be read by the eye and no explanations or dissertations should be necessary. You can be sure that there is much more there than will be read at any first reading and having made this it is not the writer’s province to explain it or to run guided tours through the more difficult country of his work.
I've recently found Jenny Diski's blog, Biology of the Worst Kind. She's one of my favorite writers in the London Review of Books, and also, she is a good friend of Doris Lessing's (a brilliant recommendation, for me; not unlike having known Virginia Woolf; not quite, but in the ballpark). She's got a good post currently on being read, after you've written.
And here is a very funny piece by Ian Frazier in the online NYer on the dangers of book addiction (found courtesy of Dorothy W). Here's a quote:
If every American back in 1950 had quit buying novels and invested money in high-yield bonds, today we would be looking at a savings surplus of several trillion dollars, and Social Security would not be in the mess it’s in.
If only my parents had stopped buying me books for my birthday, I'd be a rich woman today.
posted by mary grimm at 10:31 PM
2 Comments:
Oh, I love the Jenny Diski blog but she makes me quake a bit with lines like this: "To feel yourself a writer and also to think you may not be good enough, is terrifying. There's no safety net for the chasm of turning out not to be less than you wanted of yourself. All you can do is get on with it."
Perhaps I should read her blog every morning when I take my vitamins.
Great quote by Hemingway. It also rationalizes my pathological fear of talking to people about my writing. It always sounds lame when I talk about my stories even though my stories aren't lame.
Well, most of them aren't.
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