Yeah, baby! Talk nerdy to me!

Yeah, baby! Talk nerdy to me!

workshoperoticabangbang

“By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you’d be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.” —Richard Russo

“By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you’d be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.” —Richard Russo

The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s Struggle to Surpass “Infinite Jest.” by D. T. Max

… His novels were overstuffed with facts, humor, digressions, silence, and sadness. He conjured the world in two-hundred-word sentences that mixed formal diction and street slang, technicalese and plain speech; his prose slid forward with a controlled lack of control that mimed thought itself.”

[Click the link above to read the whole article.]

tatteredcover:

A Voluminous Dream Unfolding in Denver and South Park: Calling all booklovers in the Rocky Mountain West! Got empty rooms? Adopt a Library and help a voluminous dream come true! Read today’s Denver Post.

thelifeguardlibrarian: For several quite plain and simple reasons, an “interview” must, as a rule, be an absurdity, and chiefly for this reason—It is an attempt to use a boat on land or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. … So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance of his characters with explanations and interpretations. It is a loud confession that print is a poor vehicle for “talk”; it is a recognition that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the reader, not instruction. Mark Twain gets crabby after giving an interview. (via The Book Bench)

thelifeguardlibrarian:

For several quite plain and simple reasons, an “interview” must, as a rule, be an absurdity, and chiefly for this reason—It is an attempt to use a boat on land or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken speech is one thing, written speech is quite another.

…

So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance of his characters with explanations and interpretations. It is a loud confession that print is a poor vehicle for “talk”; it is a recognition that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the reader, not instruction.

Mark Twain gets crabby after giving an interview.

(via The Book Bench)

nathanenglander:

powells:

Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder and champion of independent bookstores, rocks on the Colbert Report.

Support your local bookstore!

“There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they’ve got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.”—Philip Roth; The Human Stain

“There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they’ve got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.”
—Philip Roth; The Human Stain

Love this!

Love this!

I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.

David Foster Wallace; Infinite Jest

[I’ve posted this before, but since today is his birthday, I’ll re-post it.]

queenchristinewrites: bewitchingbritain:    Ye Olde Cock Tavern on Fleet Street, London, originally opened its doors on the north side of the street in 1547. It has resided in this agonizingly adorable building since 1887, and was the preferred watering hole of such famous citizens as Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens, and Dr. Johnson. (marginscribbler flickr) I just drooled.

queenchristinewrites:

bewitchingbritain:

   Ye Olde Cock Tavern on Fleet Street, London, originally opened its doors on the north side of the street in 1547. It has resided in this agonizingly adorable building since 1887, and was the preferred watering hole of such famous citizens as Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens, and Dr. Johnson. (marginscribbler flickr)

I just drooled.

enchantedengland

A Book Is A Machine For ‘Reading-In’

A Book Is A Machine For ‘Reading-In’

asasku

To eat of the fruit means to leave the garden because the fruit speaks of other things, other longings. So at dusk you say goodbye to the place you love, not knowing if you can ever return, knowing you can never return by the same way as this. It may be, some other day, that you will open a gate by chance, and find yourself again on the other side of the wall.
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are not the Only Fruit (via amywhipple)
salveo: Library

salveo:

Library

salveo

Happy Birthday, David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) ““Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.” 

Happy Birthday, David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008)

““Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.”