e.e. cummings was a hero of mine in high school, so it’s been interesting since I’ve moved to Boston to occasionally see him as a local boy.
Category Archives: lit
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
So, everyone’s eulogizing Hunter S. Thompson, but I’ve never been able to understand what the fascination is. I’ve tried, but I think that somehow my demons don’t recognize much in his demons. I guess it’s not generally nice to say “what’s the big deal” when someone dies, but somehow from what I know about the guy, it seems like he’d appreciate a little piss and vinegar more than the universal fawning I’ve been reading.
e.e.
Just a note on the snottiness of my last post: I wasn’t really suggesting that it’s common knowlege, even for Cantabridgians, that e.e. cummings wrote a novel called The Enormous Room, but I would think that if you were writing a review of a restaurant, you might inquire into the source of the name…
Nobson Newtown
The imaginary city.
Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story
If you haven’t read it, read it now.
On Recommending Book
Laura Miller: ‘Recommendations most often go wrong when the person who says ”You’d love this book” really means something like ”I love this book and I wish I weren’t the only person I know who does.”’
The Princess of Neptune
My pal Quentin‘s new book is in stores now.
If all stories were written like science fiction stories
Dragons
My favorite Borges quote is from The Book of Imaginary Beings:
We are ignorant of the meaning of the dragon in the same way that we are ignorant of the meaning of the universe; but there is something in the dragon’s image that fits man’s imagination, and this accounts for the dragon’s appearance in different places and periods.
Which is one of the points that this excellent article, “Why Is Religion Natural?” from the Skeptical Inquirer makes, though in far more words. It’s interesting, but it loses me in the middle in a bunch of folklore. I end up not knowing all that much more about why religion is natural— why exactly the dragon fits man’s imagination, how the dragon comes to be.
Vonnegut schtick almost worth reading
I’ve kind of had a thing against Kurt Vonnegut since… I guess since I realized he was full of crap, which was about when I was 18. So imagine my surprise to find this little kick in the pants he penned kind of amusing. Sure, he’s still full of crap, and he’s really just re-phrasing the same lazy misanthropy he’s been peddling for 50 years now, but it somehow suddenly seems a little fresher.