February 2011
54 posts
January 2011
65 posts
“The screams of the latke grew quieter and quieter as the pancake ran out of the...”
– Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler), The Little Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: a Christmas story.
Now that’s how you write a goddamn kid’s book.
A tragedy in six words
Ate my baby, am still hungry.
“Heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole...”
– Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.
I’ll tell you what, people used to write fucking sentences back in the day.
“The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I’ll...”
– Mitch Hedberg.
“That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And...”
– Chuck Palahniuk, “Almost California” from Stranger Than Fiction
“Harry was printing some of the first bits of Ulysses, and the printer set the...”
– Giancarlo DiTrapano, “My Favourite Rich Kid,” Vice Magazine
Why Writers Are Miserable, and Often Cowardly →
It is for this reason that writers (also computer programmers, lawyers, collectors, historians, photographers, pornographers, archivists, gamers etc.) are often wretched people.
From a killer article with a great kicker by Christopher Lynsey, via Thought Catalog
“He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The huge bed stretched around him...”
– Haruki Murakami “Ufo in Kushiro” from After the Quake.
I would suck anything of Haruki Murakami’s, period.
Smilodon Even Though Your Heart Is Aching
hansonfinger:
If our cave-dwelling ancestors had been content to lie around eating soft fruits – assuming, of course, that soft fruits were readily available to be eaten in Pleistocene-era Africa – they wouldn’t have survived long enough to reproduce, and then where would we be? Sure, it’d be nice to imagine a sort of Eloi-without-the-Morlocks kind of existence of childlike art and song and...
Dragnet Issue 001 Goes Live Saturday February 26
Whee! Stay tuned for news of the physical launch party.
Being nice to children
I was wandering around the mall so I wouldn’t be too early for a job interview, and this little kid (I almost said he was four, but my ability to judge ages is so bad that trying to give him a number would probably do more harm than good) was waiting for his mom to finish talking to her friend and munching on a Dairy Queen chocolate dipped ice cream. I was walking by and he was staring at...
“If freckles don’t mean anything, does anything mean anything?”
– Darwin Deez, Constellations
I don’t usually quote songs, but this is just a really good question.
“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My...”
– Flannery O’Connor, a.k.a among the best short story writers ever. Also among the best aggressive Catholics ever.
“Nothing, thou elder brother even to shade,/ Thou hadst a being ere the world was...”
– John Wilmot (the Earl of Rochester), Upon Nothing
Most underrated poem EVER. Restoration court poetry FTW
“The following account of the late Dr. Boerhaave, so loudly celebrated, and so...”
– Samuel Johnson, The Life of Dr. Herman Boerhaave
Much love Samuel Johnson, much love.
David Foster Wallace's The Pale King to be... →
“We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don’t...”
– John Waters
(via @vicecanada, @ohsochelsey, @sarabynoe & whoever else posted this on twitter today)
Brevity is clearly not the soul of wit. Were that the case Oscar Wilde’s most famous epigram would be “No.” Brevity is, not the soul, but the feeble body of accurate description.
“Critics often use the term “minimalist” when discussing my prose....”
– -God
I mean Ray Carver.
“Says David Chalfant, an agent, about David Foster Wallace […]:...”
– Eric Koningsberg, “The Next Hot Book,” New York Magazine, 10 February, 1997
NB: Dragnet Mag disagrees and thinks David Foster Wallace was, in fact, very attractive.
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Also, I walked home from a nice girl’s house in the crisp cold air with snow glittering everywhere. Which proves my theory that life is, ultimately, nice.
“I filled out this dating thing on the computer a few weeks ago. One thing they...”
– Wells Tower, “Retreat” (from Everything Ravaged Everything Burned)
Andrew won the On The Danforth Fiction Contest →
RT @burnermag: EXACTLY 1 WEEK TIL SUBMISSION DEADLINE for Burner’s March 2011 Music Issue! Get going! http://burnermag.com/submit.html
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“For five years now Quinn had been living in the grip of this pun”
– Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
“It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.”
– Marlene Dietrich (via kari-shma)
“Industry journalist Harold Hecuba: ‘It’s the new Barnum. Nobody ever...”
– David Foster Wallace, “Big Red Son,” Consider the Lobster
RT @GalleyCat: What book topped bestseller lists the week you were born? Find out & join #birthdaybook hashtag: http://mbist.ro/fYiBS0
RT @ThoughtCatalog: I Know What David Lynch Wants http://bit.ly/fx8rWx
RT @channay: RT @TheEconomist: One of the unsung contemporary art forms of modern India: road-safety slogans http://econ.st/gVa1KE
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“Now Cadmus never knew that his dear child/ And grandson had become sea-deities;/...”
– Ovid, Metamophoses
Translation by A.D Melville
“Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets again,...”
– Dave Eggers, “Once a Year,” How the Water Feels to the Fishes
Inaugural Issue Deadline is January 15
So get your work in!
Unsettling Quotes [about grammar and literacy] from Alleged Arizona Shooter Jared Loughner http://su.pr/83dc33 (@GOOD stuff)
