March 2013
5 posts
Forgot about this song/kind of forgot about this band. What a euphoric song.
I will post with greater frequency, on a more diverse range of topics. As of now, if I’m not reading and writing and studying for school, I’m reading authors with whom I’m already familiar and know that I love — it helps provide an effective respite from school. Not too adventurous, I know, but I need it.
February 2013
2 posts
January 2013
6 posts
My initial compulsion would be to group this among my favorite Saunders stories, but some temporal distance, reflection, and re-reading will solidify this. “Spiderhead” is certainly impressive from a technical perspective. Here’s the narrator, Jeff, describes the effects of an experimental drug while the drug begins coursing through his veins:
He added some Verbaluce™ to the drip, and soon I was feeling the same things but saying them better. The garden still looked nice. It was like the bushes were so tight-seeming and the sun made everything stand out? It was like any moment you expected some Victorians to wander in with their cups of tea. It was as if the garden had become a sort of embodiment of the domestic dreams forever intrinsic to human consciousness. It was as if I could suddenly discern, in this contemporary vignette, the ancient corollary through which Plato and some of his contemporaries might have strolled; to wit, I was sensing the eternal in the ephemeral.
Similar explosions of verbal acuity occur as Jeff participates in (and bears witness to) other experiments throughout the story. The effect is striking every time, whether it’s employed to comedic or devastating effect.
Of course, clever compositional devices are only amusing for a short time unless they’re deployed in a compelling framework, which is thankfully the case with “Spiderhead.” The profound empathy with which Saunders writes is what initially earned him my admiration, and this trait is on display in this story (and the others in Tenth of December). The author gradually unveils details about Jeff’s troubled past while detailing his (unbelievably traumatic) present experience, and the denouement is nearly as affecting as that of “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz.” I can’t recommend this story enough.
You can pick up Tenth of December Here.
From Joel Lovell’s George Saunders profile in the New York Times.
December 2012
1 post
Sabrina Orah Mark, “Walter B. Needs Some Time.”
I know very little about poetry. While I was a lost, confused creative writing major at Florida State University, I completed an introductory poetry course, at which time I realized that I was neither good at writing poetry, nor was I readily receptive to a lot of it. I love prose, specifically ornate, embellished prose, but for whatever reason, most of the poetry with which I was introduced during that course left me indifferent.
All this to say that my friend Michael Shea introduced me to this poem (click the link to read the other two in the series), and I was floored. It’s so surreal, evocative, and affecting.
November 2012
8 posts
Excerpt from “Lyndon,” by David Foster Wallace
Found in Girl With Curious Hair
Another goosebump-eliciting passage from DFW, and an excellent demonstration of a literary device for which I don’t know the name. A similar technique is employed in “Good Old Neon.” The author abruptly abandons an established perspective (in both cases, that of a first person narrator) for some sort of omniscient second person point of view through which a really profound message is (almost literally) breathtakingly conveyed. The seeming difference between this and “Neon” is that the latter involves DFW desperately interjecting himself ashimself into the work, but the identity of the narrator here feels sort of nebulous.
Perhaps somebody more well-informed than myself could help explain this. Regardless, this was a great piece.
The majority of my friends love this album just as much as I do—it has affected our way of speaking to each other in the way that massive pop culture sometimes can. Not just yoloing hard, but like peppering our conversations with “girl don’t tempt me,” and “UMSO PROUD OF U,” and and “having a hard time adjusting 2 fame,” and “do you love this shit/are you high right now/do you ever get nervous” like they are inside jokes. We have all listened to it enough that we can do that. Take Care was there for us. Love trouble, break-ups, lonely nights. I don’t mind its obvious imperfections because it has become part of my life. And maybe your life too. It’s ours now.
Take care.
,___,
[O.o]
/)__)
-“—”-ovoxo
I still remember initially listening to “Marvin’s Room” late at night while driving around suburban Chicago during Summer 2011 [~*pOsT-gRad MaLaiSe*~]. I was struck by the humanity of this artist, whom I’d only recently began to perceive as more than an arrogant, self-absorbed former teen star. It was “Successful” from So Far Gone that initially won me over, but Take Care, Drake’s excellent sophomore album, has remained a consistently rewarding listening presence since its release last November. The author re-blogged here articulates thoughts very similar to my own, so instead of continuing with my rambling, you should just read her post.
Marissa Nadler & Angel Olsen, “My Dreams Have Withered and Died [Richard and Linda Thompson cover]”
An old favorite collaborating with a recent favorite. The prospect of an EP from these two is really exciting.