April 2013
1 post
“That writers “write” is meant to be self-evident. People like to say...”
– Renata Adler (via Durga Polashi)
March 2013
8 posts
1 tag
4 tags
“You have to have a certain detachment in order to see beauty for yourself rather...”
– Marilynne Robinson.
1 tag
“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years […]
Trying to...”
– T. S. Eliot
February 2013
8 posts
1 tag
January 2013
4 posts
December 2012
2 posts
3 tags
WatchI think this is my first flirtation with being on television ever since I was followed by a Japanese documentary crew in the fifth grade. Go to around 2:20!
November 2012
10 posts
4 tags
“I have never kept diaries. I just remember a lot and am more self-centered than...”
– Alice Munro. Writer. Canadian. Badass.
1 tag
1 tag
2 tags
Saag Paneer
Cooked this version of Saag Paneer tonight. Some notes (mostly for myself): I blended the spinach in the Cuisinart instead of finely chopping it—seemed insane to do it with that much Spinach. I also did make my own cheese curds (or basically harder ricotta), but they didn’t hold up when I started to fry them in the oil, even after hanging it out to dry overnight and pressing them...
On Beauty
Daniel Mendelsohn: I never really entertained the idea until I was 3/4 way through grad school that I would be a working writer. But I never saw why being a scholar should or would restrict you. I was interested in all kinds of things. Not least, to the great embarrassment of many of my colleagues, design—I was very interested in design. And so I used to get W and Vogue and Architectural...
October 2012
52 posts
“Like a tropical storm,
I, too, may one day become “better organized.”
– Lydia Davis’s “Tropical Storm”
“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic...”
– Virginia Woolf
The Believer Logger: My Ideal Bookshelf →
believermag:
Miranda July’s ideal bookshelf (top) and Judd Apatow’s ideal bookshelf (below).
A wonderful new book called My Ideal Bookshelf debuts November 13th. Writer and Paris Review editor Thessaly LaForce and artist Jane Mount interviewed their favourite creators about what few books would be…
Spoils of Biography
The family archive contains many of Fitzgerald’s books. I wrote that sentence as flatly as I could, but in fact it makes my biographer’s pulse race wildly. This is the second time in my life I have been given access to such an extraordinary source of knowledge about my subject. I had the good fortune to look at all that remains of Edith Wharton’s magnificent collection, before...
WatchJane painted my ideal bookshelf and then made a stop-motion video of it with her husband Darko. So cool!
“McEwan believes that brevity appeals to readers, because “you can hold the...”
– In praise of the novella.
