tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-329551792011-12-21T13:25:12.054-05:00Dianenoreply@blogger.comBlogger5951100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-54538148379845555592011-12-21T13:16:00.004-05:002011-12-21T13:25:12.061-05:00

Did you know that every single interruption -- phone call, greeting, check-in, dog-barking-crazily-at-nothing -- costs twenty minutes of productivity? It takes a couple of minutes to deal with the interruption, and then fifteen more to get back into flow."Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" suggests implementing "office hours," which seems like a great idea for a home office. Hope I can get

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-70904277209597079472011-12-19T21:55:00.001-05:002011-12-19T21:57:04.725-05:00

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-83144439679598906722011-12-19T12:10:00.002-05:002011-12-19T12:14:17.924-05:00

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-30049872078457894332011-12-10T14:16:00.002-05:002011-12-10T14:20:44.631-05:00

""When the student no longer needs you, you have done your job and it's truly cause for celebration even though it's hard to let go."[sniffle]

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-4467733853479397732011-12-02T16:07:00.001-05:002011-12-02T16:08:54.831-05:00

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-81980791763876412392011-11-11T20:44:00.007-05:002011-12-02T16:06:57.266-05:00

Fresh ink from You Know Who (and some other writers You Probably Know Better):Now available via amazon.com or direct from the publisher.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-48604818718996634022011-10-28T10:02:00.000-04:002011-10-28T10:03:01.878-04:00

When in doubt, go back to the material.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-76221875385574078772011-10-23T15:48:00.002-04:002011-10-23T15:51:16.755-04:00

My story, "Eleven, The Spelunker," appears in the Saint Ann's Review's tenth anniversary issue, on sale now.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-2530998743246547482011-10-09T21:40:00.002-04:002011-10-09T21:42:39.916-04:00

Ira Glass: “What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is

Dianenoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-86370310494857071802011-08-15T15:43:00.003-04:002011-09-30T17:24:10.935-04:00

Thrilled to report that Conjunctions will publish my story "The Dwindling" this fall. Pre-order your copy now at Amazon.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-21077813299078462362011-07-05T15:57:00.007-04:002011-07-05T16:03:30.717-04:00

This made my day: A macaque snagged a photographer's camera, noticed its own reflection in the lens, and took a few snaps. Something about the pic really captures my feelings about PhotoBooth.How simple have cameras become, that a macaque finds the "shoot" button more interesting -- not to mention pushable -- than anything else on the mechanism?Via.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-39457793235576209842011-06-29T17:57:00.005-04:002011-06-29T18:14:01.708-04:00

July goal: To push out a full first draft of the new novel, which is currently at 33,000 words. As usual for me in this stage of the game, the book starts slow and ends fast, the second half is only sketched in places, and the first half is less sketchy but also in need of trimming and shaping to improve the pace. In four weeks, I could get the ms. to 53,000 words, maybe 60,000, which is good

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-15644801555142009712011-06-20T20:23:00.003-04:002011-06-20T20:26:14.367-04:00

"If I am not mistaken, you were not disinclined to me, Lugones, and you would have liked to like some piece of my work. That never happened..." - Borges, Dream Tigers

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-70050040447553866672011-06-18T00:20:00.003-04:002011-06-18T00:22:15.778-04:00

Saved for later: Empathy Decline and Its Reasons: A Systematic Review of Studies With Medical Students and Residents, published in June 2011 issue of Academic Medicine.Abstract: "Empathy is a key element of patient-physician communication that is relevant to and positively influences patients' health. The authors systematically reviewed the literature to investigate changes in trainee empathy and

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-39145595186329167422011-06-17T09:53:00.002-04:002011-06-17T10:05:40.541-04:00

A curious short film that suggests the difficulty of representing empathy, at least in film: To show it, we seem to need to caricature it -- at least in this form and medium. From BBC Electric Proms.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-1382368070927171612011-06-17T09:51:00.002-04:002011-06-17T09:53:09.782-04:00

Rare footage in which Doyle explains the connection between Sherlock Holmes and his training in medicine, with a curious digression on psychic phenomena.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-14337657629663051762011-06-01T15:18:00.007-04:002011-06-01T15:42:51.839-04:00

In English, "plumber's friend" is a euphemism for a plunger. But if you are in a Parisian hotel with wonky plumbing for which you request a "plongeur," you are likely receive a visit from Greg Louganis and a lesson on French faux amis, of which plongeur is one, and not just for the plumber. So, in Paris, if you have the need, request a ventouse, and leave the plunging to the Olympians. By which I

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-58184338204907232202011-05-28T23:30:00.003-04:002011-05-28T23:37:18.400-04:00

A pink electric can opener; a programmable slow cooker; a pair of perfectly tailored Bermuda shorts; a trip to Bermuda, with or without shorts; exactly the right pair of chinos; foundation undergarments made of space-age fabrics; whalebone corset; a pair of extremely sharp scissors; ipad, kindle, perhaps a nook; a last word cocktail; praise; silence; eyelet top; frye boots in coral or lime or

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-90960702015402710722011-05-19T20:06:00.002-04:002011-05-19T20:08:42.585-04:00

Government documents will now be written in plain English, as opposed to the fancy kind.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-34930287385028784772011-04-19T15:40:00.001-04:002011-04-19T15:41:54.339-04:00

"[W]hat we've seen is always going to be a very small cup dipped out of a very big ocean, and turning your back on the ocean to stare into the cup can't change that." -- Linda Holmes, The Sad, Beautiful Fact, etc.So enough angsting about it, already.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-35264221875017435742011-03-13T01:14:00.000-05:002011-03-13T01:15:15.337-05:00

"Be a good steward of your gifts.Protect your time.Feed your inner life.Avoid too much noise.Read good books, have good sentences in your ears.Be by yourself as often as you can.Walk.Take the phone off the hook.Work regular hours."-- Jane Kenyon

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-16008085886283154892011-02-28T17:29:00.000-05:002011-02-28T17:30:12.337-05:00

"A first book is a treasure, and all these truths and quasi-truths I have written about publishing are finally ephemeral. An older writer knows what a younger one has not yet learned. What is demanding and fulfilling is writing a single word, trying to write le mot juste, as Flaubert said; writing several of them which becomes a sentence. When a writer does that, day after day, working alone with

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-91489903898045091052011-02-27T13:48:00.004-05:002011-02-27T14:07:08.423-05:00

Via WIkipedia, a delightful excerpt from La covisada (1923) by Henri Gilbert, written in Occitan and followed by its English translation:"Diablassas, diablàs, diablassonassas, diablassonàs, diablassons, diablassonetas, diablassonetassons, diablassonets, diablassonetons, diables, diablonassas, diablonàs, diablonassonas, diablonassons, diablonassonets, diabletassas, diabletàs, diabletassonas,

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-82895942766695094992011-02-16T15:43:00.006-05:002011-02-16T15:53:43.069-05:00

When in Paris, you do not grump about the Metro, and you do not give up on the Louvre just because your credit card doesn't work with Vélib. You do not forego the wine with the duck confit, should you be so lucky as to still be able, in this saturated-fat-obsessed moment, to eat duck confit, and you absolutely do not fall into a self-admiring reverie -- of your cheapness, no less -- while failing

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-51262155678823752372011-02-15T10:28:00.010-05:002011-02-15T11:53:19.055-05:00

Mark is pinch-hitting this week for James Fallows at The Atlantic.Mark blogs the way he cooks, with a flair for improvisation. ( If his blog were a restaurant, it would have a huge open kitchen.) Right now he's down about search-engine optimization, because it threatens to cut off yet another avenue through which chance and improv might, if we were lucky, allow good things to find their way into

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-63373293566002558232011-02-13T14:39:00.001-05:002011-02-13T14:39:53.987-05:00

" Writers don't choose their craft; they need to write in order to face the world." -- Alice Hoffman

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-50168579002395827042011-02-11T16:52:00.003-05:002011-02-11T17:02:53.756-05:00

A hopeful moment. Friedman had an interesting take: "In many ways, what we have witnessed in Egypt today is the real decolonization of this country."

Dianenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-80051399639850895472011-02-06T20:01:00.002-05:002011-02-06T20:16:01.428-05:00

She looked so pretty, sitting there in the half-light, writing in her diary, that instead of ordering her to bed as usual, I asked if she wanted a cup of tea.To my delight, she agreed.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-63434811087573853352011-01-27T18:57:00.018-05:002011-01-27T19:21:53.423-05:00

We're having some great dinner conversations. Tonight, we wondered about the image of the scary German Shepherd that's being used to promote Jay Z's memoir. It seems a bit prejudiced against the breed. On the other hand, MJ says, the breed was used by police for intimidation and persecution in the South and eastern Europe. Can't deny that. The breed has an image problem.Plus, Nike keeps trying to

Dianenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-57053766688120777842011-01-06T15:41:00.005-05:002011-01-06T15:46:29.371-05:00

"... to the sky or to the earth far away, to the four-cornered earth far away, to the four quarters of sky, to the billowy ocean, to the flowing streams of light, to the waters, or to the plants, to the sun or to the dawns, to the high mountains far away, to this whole moving universe, beyond the beyond, to what has been and what is to be, far away." (Adapted from the Rig Veda, trans. O'Flaherty

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-178885137167537012011-01-04T22:46:00.002-05:002011-01-04T22:47:36.220-05:00

Resolved, for 2011: More Amy Winehouse, less His Girl Friday. (We all know who "he" is.)

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-42765652879994373572011-01-03T13:39:00.003-05:002011-01-03T13:46:43.326-05:00

"I Was Sure I'd See You Someday," a short story about mothers and daughters, locks and locksmiths, and adventure stories copied onto 1970s-vintage ditto sheets, appears in the Spring 2010 issue of Folio, the literary magazine published by the MFA program at American University.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-17683141358519134502010-12-27T20:56:00.002-05:002010-12-27T21:00:11.338-05:00

Iain Sinclair takes a walk round Hackney:It's a habit I can't break, Hackney...a place of self-generating mythologies...someone steps out of a building and wants to give you another part of the narrative...

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-39054873514728560632010-12-22T19:49:00.004-05:002010-12-22T19:53:09.709-05:00

We live, among other places, on the point where the city meets its people, where those possessed by bravura strut their invincibility with little but rushing air between them and the incessant progress of the city.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-60229227259076906392010-12-21T21:09:00.001-05:002010-12-21T21:09:24.068-05:00

athomeOriginally uploaded by quiet.eye

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-17344746064461428682010-12-20T10:18:00.001-05:002010-12-20T10:19:52.366-05:00

The Zodiac of Paris made the 2010 Library Journal bestseller list in the history of science!

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-87425058966934752712010-12-13T08:52:00.003-05:002010-12-13T09:00:26.957-05:00

Across the street, the television is on: cut to pandas in a zoo, cut to spherical chef behind a large butcher block, cut to funeral of Elizabeth Edwards. In twenty-four hours, the television will still be on, but the images will be entirely different. If, as is often said, the cuts are so quick they disorient all but the very young, what is less often observed is that the news cycle runs no

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-57194134411450631692010-10-27T14:45:00.001-04:002010-10-27T14:45:50.555-04:00

Dianenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-36706749068626674412010-10-21T19:52:00.000-04:002010-10-21T20:11:45.315-04:00

So Jane is showing me around her new iCarly forNintendo DS. I do like both the DS and iCarly, but I'm not saying much while Jane runs her demo. I suspect much of the appeal of these games is just lost on me. I mean, I remember playing Pac-Man on a pizza parlor tabletop. I guess it must have seemed miraculous, but I was eight years old and everything that wasn't deadly dull was miraculous.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-29947062167337393382010-10-14T21:26:00.000-04:002010-10-15T16:39:28.086-04:00

My new favorite word: limnology, or "the study of inland waters." Apparently has nothing to do with the much-maligned limn: "'Limn' is the phoniest word in the critic's vocabulary, aside from luminous to describe a writer's prose (and usually rather gushy prose at that). [...] Most of the time journalists resort to limn because they want something fancier than describe. " So sez Michael Dirda."

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-73610425278912159362010-10-01T12:06:00.000-04:002010-10-01T12:16:18.939-04:00

Earlier this week, Jane came home with the following story. The teacher had written the bones of it, but left blank spaces for the kids to fill in. I was walking in the jungle one day. Suddenly I saw seven tigers. When I saw them, I...screamed for hlep.I knew I had to do something so I... spraed peper sprae in there eyes.Finally I... gave them a pork chop and ran away.Interestingly, Jane seems to

Dianenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-87459937464022451182010-10-01T11:58:00.000-04:002010-10-01T12:01:13.721-04:00

Just found some songs of innocence & experience, inspired by Sea Monkeys. Sea Monkeys on toastNot quite the Sunday roast.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-62580935849108666342010-09-20T09:49:00.000-04:002010-09-20T17:38:00.506-04:00

Last week a friend and I had a minor disagreement, the sort that sheds new light on the self, the other, and the relationship. The trouble was, he'd made an off-the-cuff remark that I resembled, and not, I thought, in a good way. It's not his job to flatter me. But the resemblance was plain. He was speaking his truth about me, and about the relationship --or at least his view of these things. I

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-25639735217657518422010-09-13T08:33:00.000-04:002010-09-13T08:41:27.201-04:00

After Friday's sea monkey crisis, I am not sure what to make of the two sea monkeys Jane discovered swimming in the jar this morning. Did Thursday's feeding induce an epic post-prandial sea monkey nap? Or did it cull the less hardy, leaving only these two, the super-resilient? Are they late arrivals that didn't hatch with the initial bunch? Or is this a bench science miracle? Should we call the

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-17423877044854364952010-09-10T10:04:00.000-04:002010-09-10T10:05:57.987-04:00

Yesterday we fed the baby sea monkeys according to the directions. Today they are all dead. Upgrading to version 2.0 after grief stage 5. RIP SeaMonkeys 1.0.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-26485380244131837872010-08-26T15:29:00.000-04:002010-08-26T15:52:19.054-04:00

Pleased to report some rumbles of interest in THE ZODIAC OF PARIS. A quick roundup:Over at Five Books, I helped out with a fun interview on five books that were really useful to our research. I wrote them a very special bio, too, which you might want to check out if you are interested in learning more about my, um, checkered career. (By the way, Five Books was recently picked up by Very Short

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-25832207363413250102010-08-13T17:00:00.000-04:002010-08-13T17:04:23.036-04:00

On Friday, August 20th, I'll be at Books on the Square, 471 Angell St. in Providence, to read, discuss and sign copies of THE ZODIAC OF PARIS. We'll begin at 7 pm. Hope to see you there!

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-41726431636552957452010-07-14T17:32:00.000-04:002010-07-14T17:33:40.156-04:00

More at the Moomin Shop. My cup runneth over.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-33888361743098804122010-07-14T14:15:00.000-04:002010-07-15T18:24:44.001-04:00

John Vincler replies to Mark Bernstein's concerns about the Electronic Literature Directory (ELD), a project of the Electronic Literature Organization. Vincler's post reveals some of the what's going on behind the curtain in the production of the ELD. At the moment, questions of what should and should not be included in the ELD are front and center. What I find most interesting is that authors

Dianenoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-56639174844057170162010-06-30T10:48:00.000-04:002010-06-30T10:55:03.692-04:00

Novelist Mark Tiedemann updates his kitchen and, in the process, discovers new counter space and more functional cabinetry. Cooking with gas!

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-21562833019192934902010-06-28T13:21:00.000-04:002010-06-28T13:25:41.676-04:00

In August 1799, Napoleon returned to France from an ill-fated imperial adventure in Egypt, leaving behind a demoralized force headed by Jean-Baptiste Kléber, the Revolutionary hero shortly to be assassinated in Cairo. “L’oiseau était déniché” was how the disappointed Kleber described Napoleon’s departure: The bird had flown the coop. In France, Napoleon touted the campaign as a triumph despite

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-62662709743479241332010-06-14T23:45:00.001-04:002010-06-14T23:46:15.623-04:00

"It is not the resolution of difficulty that the ideal reader we imagine for ourselves is after, but the nature of the mysterious, mysteriousness itself." -- Jonathan Baumbach, from this interview

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-47828436895734416942010-06-07T11:02:00.000-04:002010-06-07T11:03:10.852-04:00

This is not an obituary. He was 82.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-12654154905874532182010-06-05T11:51:00.000-04:002010-06-05T11:56:29.362-04:00

Spent weekend here, and I do mean both physically and virtually. (My twitter updates from the conference, like everyone else's, are tagged #eloai.) Veered from over- to underwhelmed and back, sometimes in moments; now I am basically just whelmed. Apologies to visitors and twitter followers who are not so interested in this topic; normal service to resume shortly.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-74867799032484915152010-06-01T10:41:00.000-04:002010-06-01T10:47:48.559-04:00

At GLA, from an interview with literary agent Ryan Fischer-Harbage:GLA: If tomorrow was a perfect day, what would you find in the slush pile besides “good writing”? [...]RFH: I’d like to see more academics writing about history and science for the general audience. We aim to please.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-56117009479082769652010-06-01T10:07:00.000-04:002010-06-01T10:54:44.406-04:00

She was 98. The NYT carries a faint-praise obit that pretty much reduces her to the Mother of All Art Chicks. According to the obit, she "gained fame only late in a long career" and her work "had a galvanizing effect on the work of younger artists, particularly women." Right. She raised three kids, which might account for her "late" arrival on the art scene. Her stuff was also frequently

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-51620799064840355482010-05-19T16:11:00.000-04:002010-05-19T16:14:39.044-04:00

Mark's post on speed made me laugh today. Full of excellent cooking advice, such as: "Reach for the white wine; apply liberally to the cook."

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-42222477524468518122010-05-10T13:39:00.001-04:002010-05-19T20:22:43.151-04:00

"Seven years ago one of us wandered into a small bookshop near the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. A volume half-clad in red Morocco sat intriguingly apart on a lower shelf ..."Intrigued? Get the book. It's on sale now for almost $10 off the cover price and it's in stock at BN.com (it'll be back in stock at Amazon soon).(Hope you'll forgive the self-promotion ... This book was such fun to write, and

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-67022242427414223932010-05-06T19:46:00.000-04:002010-05-06T19:49:19.199-04:00

"The market joyfully promotes worthless women writers as long as they reinforce the idea that ladies are dumb and sensitive.” -- Carmen Boullosa

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-16351381781546414752010-04-07T17:01:00.000-04:002010-04-07T17:04:46.186-04:00

Amazon gives the following subcategories for "women's fiction": divorce, domestic life, friendship, mothers and children, single women, sisters.What is not on the list: work, politics, sex.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-65663001860344384542010-04-02T19:02:00.001-04:002010-04-02T19:05:37.238-04:00

Looking forward to the next installment of Mark's lamb tagine saga."I have your lamb. But I'm not sure how you'll pay for it."

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-80610944211340242442010-03-11T14:16:00.000-05:002010-03-11T14:21:49.680-05:00

Chuckling over Laura Miller's review of David Shields' manifesto against the novel: "It's reality to say that you just can't work up the enthusiasm for novels anymore, but to proclaim from the rooftops that the novel is dead, that's showbiz."

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-38882047257473523712010-03-01T11:25:00.000-05:002010-03-01T13:34:14.859-05:00

"Unsolicited Advice (for Eliza Blair)" is up for a prize in 3QuarksDaily's contest. So are many other marvelous entries. Vote here.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-62870147236865974092010-02-08T11:03:00.000-05:002010-04-25T01:06:29.361-04:00

The early buzz for THE ZODIAC OF PARIS is encouraging!"This book presents important and fascinating themes, and skillfully combines them. The birth of Egyptology, the French Revolution, the rule of Napoleon, the age of the Earth, and our knowledge of the stars all feature in its chapters. Above all there is the ever-shifting relationship between science, religion, and atheism. I discovered

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-81332184569572956392010-02-07T12:00:00.000-05:002010-02-08T08:34:56.792-05:00

Much moved today by the writer and scientist Eliza Blair's birthday post. At 25, Blair has already published award-winning science fiction while pursuing a dream to go to the moon. (Via.)She's worried about the Amazon/Macmillan mess, and about the Obama administration's gutting of manned lunar missions.I can't say much about the latter, except that it's disappointing. What I want to address is

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-88079946757816696662010-01-15T14:34:00.000-05:002010-01-15T14:50:24.761-05:00

At The Rumpus, Elissa Bassist posts a hilarious, mostly imaginary interview with Elaine Showalter. The focus, as you might expect, is on women and writing, but like both, it is also so much more than that. I often explain to my mother that to be a writer means to suffer mercilessly and experiment with prescription medication.Go read. Just do it. It's that good.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-83303122366676811062010-01-12T16:22:00.000-05:002010-01-12T16:34:40.894-05:00

At The Millions, Sonya Chung posts a sane, smart response to Katie Roiphe's recent NYT essay, in which she complains about the tentative approach to sex preferred by four contemporary American novelists. (In Roiphe's essay, this handful of writers is taken quite wrongly to be somehow representative of the whole of current American fiction). Chung's essay is worth reading in its entirety, not

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-35650981389489184392010-01-05T12:22:00.000-05:002010-01-05T12:33:35.118-05:00

Heritage Key features THE ZODIAC OF PARIS in a roundup of books to watch this year:"The Zodiac of Paris by Jed Z. Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz is a study of the Dendera zodiac, an ancient bas-relief temple ceiling adorned with mysterious symbols of the stars and planets. It was first discovered by the French during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, and quickly provoked a controversy between

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-6235815157138582612009-12-25T21:11:00.000-05:002009-12-25T21:23:33.388-05:00

Milorad Pavic died on Nov. 30th. We'd corresponded briefly before the war, about a hypertext adaptation of one of his books. He struck me as kind and quirky, open to lots of ideas about writing.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-55847090928010169752009-12-17T09:02:00.001-05:002009-12-17T09:14:58.093-05:00

"I would walk the floe-edge, then, in those days, hoping to hear the narwhals, for the wonder of their company; and hoping, too, that they would not come. The narwhal is a great fighter for its life, and it is painful to watch its struggle. When they were killed, I ate its flesh out of respect for distant ancestors, and something older than myself. [..] "I watched closely the ivory gull, a small

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-19314573349452928642009-11-25T14:36:00.000-05:002009-11-25T14:40:51.167-05:00

THE ZODIAC OF PARIS is now available for pre-order on Amazon!"This book makes a major contribution to European scientific, intellectual, and cultural history. Buchwald and Josefowicz have wrested from oblivion a subject that no previous author, French or English, has analyzed in this form or breadth. The Zodiac of Paris not only embodies interdisciplinarity at its very best, but also exposes the

Dianenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-21661059851449330052009-11-13T14:03:00.000-05:002009-11-13T14:08:14.906-05:00

It was delicious. And the company could not be beat. Thanks, Mark!

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-6881722149280451242009-11-06T16:00:00.000-05:002009-11-06T16:10:57.217-05:00

Some fish, notably sharks, have a sense organ, the lateral line system, which picks up weak electrical signals in the water, alerting them to prey that would be otherwise invisible and possibly also helps with navigation. There's some evidence that this "organ" is ontogenetically related to the inner ear in humans.Thought experiment: Say you're a shark, and a yummy snack is hiding just beneath

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-48573420647446278142009-10-30T20:09:00.000-04:002009-10-30T20:19:40.239-04:00

"Resicle! The Erth needs us. If you resicle your not just helping resicle your helping Trash Ilind. Do you wont anumles to be helthy or not? Think ubawt the anumles fish skwid and meny uthrs."Yeah. What she said.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-84332313330785498752009-10-24T13:21:00.000-04:002009-10-24T13:28:18.372-04:00

"Legend has it that he was the son of a king, from Dacia or Denmark, who married a French princess in Paris. During the wedding night, the story goes, he was afflicted with a sense of profound unworthiness. Today, he is supposed to have said to his bride, our bodies are adorned, but tomorrow they will be food for worms. Before the break of day, he fled, making a pilgrimage to Italy, where he

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-17612245108214194692009-10-21T14:53:00.000-04:002009-10-21T14:55:41.272-04:00

"Method of this project: literary montage. I need not say anything. Merely show. I shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenious formulation. But the rags, the refuse -- these I will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them." -- Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-26319851244579564202009-10-17T18:15:00.000-04:002009-10-17T18:18:03.787-04:00

Twelve thousand words into a new novel and I'm at the first serious tangle. There's a fragile madness to starting books. This time around I'm struck less by the madness -- I've been here before -- than by the fragility. The story's just a bubble until it's real.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-66047735862202106812009-10-13T09:53:00.000-04:002009-10-13T10:00:45.892-04:00

Back when the idea of a listserv was still interesting enough for me to spend time on one, someone posted Sartre's Lost Cookbook. October 6I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of cigarettes, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked.Fifteen years on, it still makes me laugh. Wish I knew who wrote it.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-60154517762053037752009-10-12T18:40:00.000-04:002009-10-13T09:42:14.895-04:00

Via HuffPost169.html">CAIRO -- Egypt's antiquities czar took his campaign to recover the nation's lost treasures to a new level on Wednesday by cutting ties with one of the world's premier museums, the Louvre, over disputed artifacts.Scroll down: The Dendera zodiac, the focus of my new book, THE ZODIAC OF PARIS, with Jed Z. Buchwald, is among the disputed items.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-18563575909629312012009-10-10T21:24:00.000-04:002009-10-10T21:30:52.179-04:00

In a wonderful post about how his cooking has changed, Mark reminds me that pleasure -- in eating, in writing, in most things -- is all about the details. Warm the plates. Use wine glasses.Yes.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-22578414591283646732009-10-08T19:04:00.000-04:002009-10-08T19:42:52.265-04:00

I have grown mighty tired of books written for children. Magic Treehouse, I love you, but I just can't read any more saccharine escapist fantasies involving magic wands and wizards.So MJ and I have switched Jane's bedtime reading to something edgier. Damon Runyon's Omnibus, in fact.This decision has not been without consequences.Tonight, while we are eating dinner, MJ asks Jane about a new

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-38139248062216751932009-10-07T09:17:00.001-04:002009-10-07T09:19:54.521-04:00

"What we ask of writers is that they guarantee survival of what we call human in a world in which everything appears inhuman [...] Literature is like an ear that can hear beyond the understanding of the language of politics." -- Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-8634807174914254692009-09-28T14:37:00.000-04:002009-09-28T15:10:01.931-04:00

A moving series of photos from Pripyat -- sentinel photographs really, telling us this, too, is a human possibility, showing us one version of the future -- 20 years downstream from Chernobyl.(Photo: Pedro Moura Pinheiro via:villageofjoy.com)(The subject line's from Shona Laing's 1987 Soviet Snow.)

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-19374710653535273672009-09-26T11:38:00.000-04:002009-09-26T17:35:25.402-04:00

One Friday afternoon some eighteen years ago, I punched my time card to begin my shift at the Cafe at Brooks, a now-defunct restaurant on Providence's East Side. I was nineteen years old, a rising college junior with a double major in English literature and philosophy, who was looking forward to hitting the books -- Proust, Joyce and Faulkner, that semester -- in the fall with a nice cushion of

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-53391502943406374352009-09-25T12:54:00.001-04:002009-09-25T12:56:06.703-04:00

A good result. I shall not push this. The material -- the title story to Malediction -- is fragile and still forming.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-76111993638197174582009-09-16T13:36:00.000-04:002009-09-16T15:36:11.609-04:00

A story's been in my head for month and I can't say what has kept me from writing it. Distance from mind's eye to screen seems impossibly far sometimes. But now that I've started, I'm reasonably happy about it, meaning happy enough to look forward to doing more with it tomorrow. Need to start a sentence and not finish it -- leaving myself a sort of trail to follow on my way back into the work.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-47147284849970678112009-09-09T10:13:00.001-04:002009-09-09T10:37:02.767-04:00

Yesterday, I found my new office at BU.It is in the same building as Agni. The lobby floor is tiled, in the tiny tiles characteristic of turn-of-the-century buildings in this part of Boston. The ground floor is a warren of tiny rooms. My office is one of them.The office is bright. There are three windows, of which one opens. Another is a big bay, a little like the one that graced my first

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-12118354470083186722009-09-01T19:44:00.000-04:002009-09-01T20:02:44.201-04:00

Jane is just out of the bath. MJ is braiding her hair. "L and I have arguments at school," Jane says."Oh?" I worry about this. Arguments between first graders can be brutal. "What sorts of arguments?""Well, L says we have to do one thing, and I say we have to do another. And that is the argument.""Hmm. That sounds more like a disagreement to me." Another teachable moment. I have already admitted

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-23775892672788095892009-08-25T17:54:00.000-04:002009-08-25T17:59:57.447-04:00

"Perhaps all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways, but in any home where one person usurps or is given more than a fair share of the oxygen, the others must find ways to go on breathing: denial, secrets, control, use, anger... As a writer, no question my anxiety, my concern for my children, my sometimes longing to escape and leave no forwarding address, were the initial energies that

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-23548958684746897372009-08-25T10:23:00.000-04:002009-08-25T10:33:01.031-04:00

Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock opens tomorrow. Synopsis (from the review): It tells the story of Elliot Teichberg (played by Demetri Martin), a semi-closeted New York City painter who returns to the Catskills in the summer of 1969 to help his crotchety Russian Jewish immigrant parents (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) revive their fleabag motel. When the nearby town of Wallkill pulls the plug on

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-37060500320221264832009-08-21T21:38:00.000-04:002009-08-21T21:40:43.474-04:00

"You want to be a map fetishist, help yourself. I'm gone." -- Iain Sinclair, Landor's Tower

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-11290550193015484722009-08-19T20:38:00.001-04:002009-08-19T21:15:56.243-04:00

nike Originally uploaded by quiet.eye. Would like to eat your slippers.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-2566037434061200822009-08-19T11:22:00.000-04:002009-08-19T11:35:27.926-04:00

The NYT reviews Fred Kaplan's new book, 1959: The Year Everything Changed, in which he argues that the transformations of the late 1960s built on groundwork laid a decade before by innovators like Gregory Pincus and Barney Rosset. I would add Thomas Kuhn to the mix though I am not sure Kaplan does. Though Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions was required reading for the 60s counterculture,

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-90689509596074991742009-08-18T16:19:00.000-04:002009-08-18T16:24:45.438-04:00

Today's eye candy for bibliophiles:More here. So totally wonderful. via Moonrat.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-34969461205111223252009-08-16T11:27:00.000-04:002009-08-16T11:38:16.849-04:00

The NYT runs a first-person account of being just slightly too late for the late (iconic) Sixties. A fresh spin. Nuances. I've got Pynchon's latest on my desk, plus the new Colum McCann. Pynchon's is set in this era; McCann's is set slightly later, but the book is about coming out of the penumbra of 1969. It's like the zeitgeist has gone all meta, saying: time to reconsider that other zeitgeist,

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-25981214896626791462009-08-14T13:41:00.001-04:002009-08-14T13:44:42.409-04:00

If Picasso had had the Internet, Guernica might have looked like this.via Vika and Moonrat

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-1556184540476243422009-08-14T10:03:00.000-04:002009-08-14T13:09:08.594-04:00

Lotta buzz about Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's WSJ article on how to reform US healthcare.I wish Mackey would stay out of the papers and just stick to groceries. I like shopping at Whole Foods, but he just makes it more and more difficult to do.Despite the buzz it's generating, the article is mostly fluff -- "Enact Medicare reform," Mackey says, as if this were simple. "Eat better," he says, as

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-43238400896633032922009-08-14T09:06:00.000-04:002009-08-14T09:49:07.183-04:00

The Bridge of the Golden Horn, a novel by by Emine Sevgi Ozdamar, a Turkish woman who migrated to Germany in the 1960s as a "guest worker" and whom I've mentioned here before, is just out in translation from Serpent's Tail.

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-13167300982914554532009-08-13T20:11:00.000-04:002009-08-13T20:12:12.025-04:00

"No more facings. Or bookings." -- Jane

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32955179.post-40057410046998151222009-08-13T09:37:00.000-04:002009-08-13T09:38:26.921-04:00

Dianenoreply@blogger.com0