April 2012
36 posts
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“If formal verse can be likened to carving, free verse to modeling, then one...”
– W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand, from the FSG Poetry blog The Best Words in Their Best Order.
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Rosecrans Baldwin on Carla Bruni and Pants
Third week in December, I risked my life and rented a Vélib to ride to work. Face-smacking loveliness of a day, and while I navigated around Place de la Concorde and began climbing up the Champs-Elysées, I heard a loud rushing RRRrrriiiiiipppppppp. Whence cometh hell.
It had sounded like a scooter revving its engine. In fact, my crotch was gone. I’d pedaled too hard, and the seat had been ripped...
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Rosecrans Baldwin on Pairing Cheeseburgers and...
I refilled our cups and asked Bruno if there was any food a Parisian wouldn’t pair with champagne.
Looking back, I think, Oh, the sum of small acts …
“Cheeseburger?” I said.
Bruno turned away from his computer. “Cheeseburger, why do you always talk about cheeseburger? But it’s not bad, sure.”
“How about sushi?”
“Sushi, beer is better,” Bruno said, “but sure, champagne.”
“That works?” I...
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“If the only advantage of affluence were the ability to buy yachts, sports cars,...”
– Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
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“The newspapers showed President Sarkozy and Carla Bruni sightseeing during a...”
– Rosecrans Baldwin, in Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down
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Rosecrans Baldwin on French Seduction
There was a lot to observe in Paris about seduction, about the Parisian manner of seduction. If only because seduction was the base syrup of most exchanges, business or otherwise, along with confrontation.
I found more lessons in my coworkers’ social-media updates than in watching lovers make out along the Seine—most of those lovers being tourists. Of course, plenty of French people still...
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“I don’t even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve....”
– Frank O’Hara, “Personism”
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A Few Notable Critics Pick the Novels That Should... →
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Let's All Have a Poet's Day
amiwithani:
Today’s delightful British-ism: “having a poet’s day” = leaving work at noon and spending the rest of the day drinking in a pub.
Oh those charming Brits.
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Jonathan Franzen on "Comma-Then"
From the latest Work in Progress, a new essay from Franzen:
There’s so much to read and so little time. I’m always looking for a reason to put a book down and not pick it up again, and one of the best reasons a writer can give me is to use the wordthen as a conjunction without a subject following it.
She lit a Camel Light, then dragged deeply.
He dims the lamp and opens the window,...
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"Date Night" with Amelia Gray
A new short story by Amelia Gray, author of THREATS:
“The woman and man are on a date. It is a date! The woman rubs a lipstick print off her water glass. The man turns his butter knife over and over and over and over and over. Everyone has to pee. What’s the deal with dates! The man excuses himself to go pee. At the table, the woman scratches her forearm a little too hard, and a slice of...
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How to Flirt in the Mid-19th Century
If you aren’t already reading Letters of Note, perhaps this literary nugget will convince you to do so. Here is Anthony Trollope’s real letter to his… mistress? Paramour? Sycophant? We don’t know. We do know he had a very, um, cold view of love and marriage.
Waltham House Waltham Cross March 24. 1861 My dearest Miss Dorothea Sankey My affectionate & most excellent...
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“This is just why Larkin is so attractive: he is smarter than we are and more...”
– Michael Dirda in The New Criterion
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“When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did...”
– Jonathan Franzen, “Pain Won’t Kill You,” from Farther Away: Essays
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An ASME Nomination
johnjeremiahsullivan:
Congrats to John Jeremiah Sullivan from all of us here at FSG: his New York Times Magazine piece “You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” has just been named a finalist for the 2012 National Magazine Awards (Feature Writing). Read the full list of finalists here.
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“The kind of bad taste I portrayed never achieved wide success, except for...”
– John Waters, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal
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Who are the 100 best journalists of the past 100...
NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute sought to answer this question, and a host of familiar names appear: Hannah Arendt, Carl Bernstein, James Baldwin, Robert Capa, Truman Capote.
What’s even better isThe New Yorker has pulled a few of their featured writers’ pieces from the archives. (Unfortunately, just for subscribers.)
There are enough longreads here to fill a...
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Zadie Smith's "On Beauty" is Coming to Hollywood.... →
