Writing

Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, Pp. 406-7.

Jacob’s Summary

“ The biblical counterpart of Odysseus, Jacob must solve the fundamental human difficulties illustrated in the pre-Abrahamic chapters of Genesis. ”

George Orwell, a letter (the new book referred to is 1984)

You Have to Leave Glasgow about 8am

“ We also have to shoot rabbits when the larder gets low, and grow vegetables, though of course I haven’t been here long enough to get much return from the ground yet, as it was simply a jungle when I got here. With all this you can imagine that I don’t do much work however I have actually begun my new book and hope to have done four or five chapters by the time I come back in October. ”

“He was no longer so worried about becoming a man; he felt that to an extent he had become one. But in his heart he wondered if he would ever learn the language of men.” A study of Mad Men‘s Pete Campbell character, interspersed with quotes from Norman Mailer’s immortal short story, “The Language of Men”.

Hopefully this means I can feel a little less sickly, cos I use the term quite a lot.

Lovely long interview in national treasure Haaretz with national treasure Amos Oz.

On the rise of the ebook and how it’s just another step in the increasing convenience of distributing a written work, just as books typeset on paper are.

Siri voice recognition punctuation reference.

What a tour de force from Edward Luttwak on The Iliad.

On the enduring appeal of Sherlock Holmes by John Pemble.

Pico Iyer on travel writing.

Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011.

Sometimes luminous, sometimes tedious piece on writing by Sven Birkerts in the increasingly nice Los Angeles Review of Books.

Hitch on Nietzsche: Am I Really Stronger?

Joseph Epstein on the aphorisms of Rochefoucauld.

Two perfect diatribes: Jonathan Lethem on Norman Mailer in the Los Angeles Review of Books, William Deresiewicz on Harold Bloom in The New Republic [seems to require registration now].

The symphony, the novel, and the end of their affair due to one of them’s demise.

Conrad Black, facing more jail time, remains irrepressible.

Did Ken Kesey save the world?

Text of David Cameron’s address to Parliament on the looting outbreak.

Walter Russell Mead waxes deep on Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. “…The people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul.”

Some inside baseball on what happens when AOL buys your client.

Michael Totten reposts his masterly visit to Tripoli in light of Libya’s pending liberation.

My goodness: a long juicy New Yorker piece on David Grossman.

Walter Russell Mead welcomes this incoming college class with some wise words.

“You come for Crumb, you stay for Harvey.” —Neil Gaiman. Harvey Pekar, comics writer, 1940-2010

Another wonderful blog post by Walter Russell Mead, this time hoping that the blogosphere find a not-so-distant mirror in 18th-century London.

What a find: Walter Russell Mead’s Blog.

Wonderful blog, Letters of Note, exactly what you hope it’ll be.

A test of input device speed for a 221-word passage.

Wow, everyone’s gonna be reading this one. Michael Kinsley demolishes the desiccated style endemic to big media reporting.

David Brooks’ Sidney Awards for great online essays.

Try Ommwriter, the enlightened text editor. Mac only, obviously.

Bill Clinton tells us what’s up and what to read. Interesting, though his recommending Paul Krugman, who seems to me unfailingly wrong about everything, stands as a warning.

Language extinction – Fall/full-McWhorter-Fall-2009.html, a case for not getting too upset by.

On email. “…when correspondents have a difference of opinion, it usually makes matters worse. It creates a lot of busywork. It is responsible for the emoticon.”

With technology, our relationship to culture becomes less like a long-distance romance and more like marriage.

Mailer reluctantly revisited. For the most part I agree with this withering skewering, but it amateurishly omits some of his best stuff, the style of his pieces for The Village Voice.

How to sign off an email?

This shallow, poorly-edited, panegyric to contemporary Israel is unworthy of The Weekly Standard.

The story of the writing of 1984.

David Brooks writes the first beautiful prose on the Iranian protests — see paragraphs 3 and 4. And it stays lyrical as well as wise. Brooks’s best ever?

JJ Abrahms on Charlie Rose. Charlie at 28:20: “Lost. People that I know love it, love it, love it.”

Apart from his tiresome and overly-revealing reference in every piece to Iraq as a disaster — which, fair enough, most hacks do — John Lancaster’s London Review of Books pieces make a fun collection.

Genius blog. Daily Routines — How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.