Celebrity Letterhead
Web Urbanist selected the letterhead of seventeen celebrities from a larger catalog at Letterheady. This is Leonard Cohen’s. Make sure you compare it to Richard Simmons’.
(via @gary_hustwit)
Lydia Davis’s Twitter Feed
Friend of clusterflock Mike Topp retweeted a Lydia Davis tweet yesterday, which prompted me to hope she was a regular on Twitter. Alas, this is the entirety of her Twitter feed:
Although I don’t mind them, I feel cut off from all the other people in this country — to mention only this country.
— Lydia Davis (@lydia_davis) November 2, 2009
I would need something like a cowboy in order to get away from thinking.
— Lydia Davis (@lydia_davis) November 2, 2009
I AM SIMPLY NOT INTERESTED, AT THIS POINT, IN CREATING NARRATIVE SCENES BETWEEN CHARACTERS.
— Lydia Davis (@lydia_davis) November 2, 2009
To be exhaustive is, of course, an infinite task: more events can always be inserted, more nuance in the narration…
— Lydia Davis (@lydia_davis) November 2, 2009
Fuck bitches. Get money.
— Lydia Davis (@lydia_davis) November 17, 2009
Of course, there are other ways to read Lydia Davis.
once upon a time
I started dreaming there were empty rooms — an unknown space that suddenly existed at the turn in the stairs, or if you crouched beneath the mantel of the fireplace. I also dreamed my mother wore a mask, and if you reached to take it off, another one appeared. The empty rooms came back. There’s a gap between at least of twenty years. I feel the potential now of waking up and they’ll still be there, an extension of the default.
Fictionaut: Cooper Renner
I am almost envious of the simplicity of living that long time flocker, Cooper Renner, describes:
What is it like living sparely and simply, something you have mentioned to me, having a simple life as a creative person in all the ways that you do…
I wish I could live even more simply. I guess it all started twenty years ago when I started getting geographically restless. Moving lots of things around gets really boring (not to mention heavy and time-consuming), so I started divesting. About five years later I bought and moved into a travel trailer for the first time and started living in RV parks. One simply can’t pile up a lot of stuff if one has only 200 square feet to live in. And then several years after that I switched to a trailer with less than 100 square feet, so… Having a Nook helps in the book area, and using an iPod helps musically. I’ve long since gotten to the point that things feel like a terrible burden to me, something to care for and worry about. If a university somewhere would give me an office to work out of, then I would almost certainly let books start piling up again, even against my own will, in that office, and still keep my living space light. I tend toward the thought, though I haven’t quite attained the reality of it, that I don’t want to own anything that anybody would want to steal from me.
Cooper, however, mostly talks about his writing with a rather nice hat tip to clusterflock’s creator, Deron Bauman:
Because I didn’t go through the MFA (or any comparable) system, most of my learning about writing has come through reading (mostly older) writers and from contacts with editors (generally writers themselves) who published my poems, notably Gordon Lish and Deron Bauman. I also had long and encouraging correspondences with Donald Hall and Guy Davenport, though we didn’t necessarily discuss my work all that much. We wrote about books, writers, all sorts of things.
Tim Tebow & Why Faith Makes Us Nervous
If you all haven’t already happened upon it, Chuck Klosterman wrote an absolutely fascinating essay for Grantland describing the significance of Tim Tebow and why he seems to be so polarizing as a professional football player. It’s mostly about Tebow and football, except that it’s not – it’s about so much more than that:
I doubt many Christians believe that God is unfairly helping Tebow win games in the AFC West. I’m sure a few hardcores might, but not many. However, I get the impression that especially antagonistic secularists assume this assumption infiltrates every aspect of Tebow’s celebrity, and that explains why he’s so beloved by strangers they cannot relate to. Their negative belief is that penitent, conservative Americans look at Tebow and see a man being “rewarded” for his faith, which validates the idea that believing in something abstract is more important than understanding something real. And this makes them worried about the future, because they see that thinking everywhere. It seems like the thinking that ran this country into the ground.
I don’t think I’ve read such a straight-forward and correct explanation for why I get so nervous in a culture preoccupied more with feeling something than knowing anything. Also, I’m fairly convinced that some of the best writing happening today is on Grantland, the little sports website that could.
Film.com Reviews
A Roundup of our reviews for the weekend.
I wrote these:
Young Adult
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Other people wrote these:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
New Year’s Eve
The Sitter
The New Breed of Writers
The biggest shock to their increasingly delicate systems occurs when they actually see Big Name Writer’s copy emerge from the hands of an editor. How disillusioning to discover that BNW’s article doesn’t arrive in perfect form, that thoughts may be muddy, that insights may be unobserved … and that an editor actually pushes the writer to think, to make the changes, or wades in and makes the changes on his/her own, usually after discussion with said BNW. It is a bruising business, and only the highly articulate need apply. The goal, after all, is to say something worth killing a tree for.
Transit
Don’t eat so much. You don’t have to keep going until everything is gone. The Clean Plate Club is not looking for new members. You are already full, so why do you continue eating? You taste nothing.
Review your hardware-store shopping list. Arrange the items in two categories: things that must be fixed before they break something else, and parts for projects you will never start. Stop choosing tools based on whether you think they will outlast your span of years. Do not synthesize memories and likely scenarios as you did last time.
from the comments
I’m making a lot of notes next to your names in my spreadsheet.
Yelping with Cormac
And so. This is how the uprising began. How in the towns of that country under the cobalt vault of the sky impassive and immutable the villagers took to arms under the banner of the halfeaten taco. What was to come was not man’s doing but of some celestial machinery. Who are we to ask why? For once the taco was eaten it could not be uneaten nor could the tragedy looming be diverted or waylaid.
Excerpt from “Taco Bell, 2nd Review”, Yelping with Cormac
(via Coudal)
Memorandum
All:
Please disregard my recent emails. Forget about the phone messages, too. I know I sounded angry and excited, but I’ve had a chance to think things over and I don’t feel the same as I did when I said all of those hurtful words. I won’t apologize for the basis of my comments—I have a right to my own opinions, especially because they are correct—but regret your exposure to that barrage of toxicity. And the physical threats. You’ll notice I did not say “sorry.” That word is for the weak.
42 S. Deacon St. #5
There are at least fifty things about her you cannot stand. Maybe a thousand:
She is soft and smells nice. Talks on the phone all day. Makes your favorite meals without being asked. Throws your Maxim magazines on the floor when she’s angry with you. Is sad when an animal gets hurt. Loses your car keys. Asks your opinion and listens to your response as if it matters. There’s more.
first
The gate was open. Down the hill a canal. The soft edges of the end of the day. By the time I returned, I knew they were looking for me. She took her turn. He was still out. When he saw me, he beat me in front of her. We had an agreement. If you let this happen again, I’ll finish it. Then he held me and said it was love.
from the spam
Then she suddenly hears the noise a few minutes later. Amy walks out of her apartment to the next door apartment and knocks on the door. Then she hears the noise get louder. Amy tries to open the door but it is locked.
headline of the day, II
Bad Handwriting Foils Bank Heist
Wonderin’
If you could imagine a TV show you’d want to watch what would it be like?
writing prompts
Deron asked if I’d be willing to do a weekly update highlighting some of the stuff from the other places I post things. I said yes, especially because it sounded like a few others might be doing the same thing, which I know I would really enjoy. So, here goes. I’ll show you mine if… you know.
The main thing I’ve been throwing internet time at is a Tumblr where I post writing prompts.
Three More, the Third Day…
Tussel kept the pedal to the floor, pushing through resistance. The dusky, snow-blown scenery in his frost-glazed periphery, rushing and slowing as gusting wind pushed against him. Tussel’s car the beleaguered transport toward a what he could not yet name a why for.
Three for Today (Day Two)
Troy Davis died yesterday by the hand of justice. Many factions fought both sides. When does truth lie?
Three “perfect” self-contained sentences a day…
Tussel bore left on the wye West–North, West-northish. Nosing his old de Ville into wind-chill rushing across glacial tundra and down, from a thousand miles ahead. Forty-five miles an hour, nine miles a gallon, Tussel gripped the wheel, leaned into the accelerator, pressing the head-wind.
I already screwed up. They’re not “self-contained.”
from the comments
SC:
Well, it seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing: With an unprecedented amount of available text, our problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information — how I manage it, parse it, organize and distribute it — is what distinguishes my writing from yours.
A Lotta More
Before I can tell my story, I’ll need an old pickup truck. Ford or Chevy, it doesn’t matter. Not a Dodge. A little rust around the wheel wells is fine, but not so much of it that the fenders are flapping like a killdeer’s wings. Faded, powdery two-tone paint is acceptable. An old comforter covering the duct tape covering the high-mileage driver’s seat is okay, too. The truck should graze in clover and timothy up past the hubcaps. Yes, the windshield is cracked.
“Uncreative Writing”
Kenneth Goldsmith in The Chronicle Review:
For the past several years, I’ve taught a class at the University of Pennsylvania called “Uncreative Writing.” In it, students are penalized for showing any shred of originality and creativity. Instead they are rewarded for plagiarism, identity theft, repurposing papers, patchwriting, sampling, plundering, and stealing. Not surprisingly, they thrive. Suddenly what they’ve surreptitiously become expert at is brought out into the open and explored in a safe environment, reframed in terms of responsibility instead of recklessness.
“writing, especially on the internet, is hardly the quickest path to fame and fortune”
I don’t mean to end on a crushing note. There’s huge value in internet publishing beyond its minute potential for saving you from ever needing “a real job.” But for a while I thought it would have that potential for me and it didn’t. Instead, what I got was an unexpected community of people to learn from, and a chance to work with people like Lloyd. People interested in making good stuff on the internet, even if it never gets us anything. That’s the reason to try your hand at web-publishing: it’s a beach-head onto the wider world of substantive accomplishment and relationships than any Twitter account or Facebook page is. But it hardly guarantees you of anything but a modest square of sand.
Wendy MacNaughton’s snacks of the scribblers
Wendy MacNaughton:
When I sit down to work, I keep a small bowl of garlic croutons on my desk. These are little rewards for good ideas and strong lines, Pavlovian pellets to keep my spirits up. Recently, I began to wonder what fuel writers have relied on, and the answers turned out to be all over the culinary map.
(via, @tcarmody)
