Tweets
- @mwelker How painful is waiting? Still, 3 months is OK - I've waited 9+ only to get a "thanks anyway". Good luck! 16 hours ago
- RT @Ditchwalk Shocker. "What your phone app doesn't say: It's watching" http://bit.ly/aO3BZR Apps take private data, ship it to 3rd parties. 17 hours ago
- @ExisleMoll Thanks for the retweet, Marc. 22 hours ago
- On the blog - The writer's voice: Recordings of DeLillo, DFW, Joyce, Faulkner, Pound & Eliot reading their work: http://bit.ly/atc0cC 22 hours ago
- RT @ExisleMoll my 3 new posts on self-publishing http://bit.ly/4rx8eh Including the value we place on modern artists 23 hours ago
Categories
Blogroll
What I’m reading

-
Meta
Tag Archives: others
Shells, bones and silence – extract from The Waves
‘Having dropped off satisfied like a child from the breast, I am at liberty now to sink down, deep, into what passes, this omnipresent, general life. (How much, let me note, depends upon trousers; the intelligent head is entirely handicapped by shabby trousers.) One observes curious hesitations at the door of the lift. This way, [...]
Another presence – Extract from An Imaginary Life
Almost immediately, in the golden light of a fine autumn day, with the sky broken in rainpools among the drifts of yellow leaves, he is there, standing quite still and taller after two years among the slashed birches. I am filled with joy. He is there. He is real. The others see him too. He [...]
I wish you way more than luck – extract from This is Water
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically [...]
Posted in By others, David Foster Wallace Also tagged David Foster Wallace, extracts, philosophy, this is water Leave a comment
The acts of madmen – extract from Has Man a Future?
In negotiations between East and West, both sides, if they were sane, would not regard each other as the enemy, but would view the H-bomb as the common enemy of both. Both East and West have a common interest, which is to escape the common destruction threatened by modern weapons. Both sides are blinded to [...]
The City of Brass part II – extract from The Arabian Nights
The Emir said to his Wazir Talib bin Sahl and to the chief officers about him, “How shall we contrive to enter this city and view its marvels?: haply we shall find therein wherewithal to win the favour of the Commander of the Faithful.” “Allah prolong the Emir’s fortune!” replied Talib, “let us make a [...]
The City of Brass – extract from The Arabian Nights
The Emir Musa asked the Shaykh, “What is yonder vast blackness and its twin fires?”; and the guide answered, “Rejoice O Emir, for this is the City of Brass, as it is described in the Book of Hidden Treasures which I have by me. Its walls are of black stone and it hath two towers [...]
Chieko’s sadness – extract from The Old Capital
Takichiro was drinking festival sake with a guest in the back room. He was not so much drinking as keeping him company. Shige was up and down waiting on them.
“I’m home,” Chieko said.
“You’re early.” Shige looked at her daughter. Chieko greeted her father’s guest.
“Mother, I’m sorry I was too late to help out here.”
“That’s all [...]
Posted in Japanese literature Also tagged extract, j. martin holman, japanese literature, translations, yasunari kawabata Leave a comment
The greatest humiliation of his life
“Undoubtedly Dante himself had envisioned this meeting differently. Nothing in the preceding pages indicates that the greatest humiliation of his life awaits him here.” By Theophil Spoerri, taken from ‘The Meeting in a Dream’, one of Jorge Luis Borges’s Dantesque Essays.
Purgatorio: Canto XXX
When the Septentrion of the highest heaven
(Which never either setting knew or [...]
The swift ants of India – extract from The Histories