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As a food and travel writer, what I do for a living may seem trivial, but whenever I think of it as ephemeral to the great issues of the day, I am reminded of a scene in the play 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' Isolated for months in an attic but still believing they will soon escape, the family fantasizes about the first thing each member will do when they return to the world outside.
Anne says she yearns to go to a dance. The teenage boy wants to go to a movie, a western movie! And the adults all start remembering and dreaming of a wonderful pastry shop, a good stew, a romantic restaurant with thick linen and fine wines. None, not one, declares that the first thing he wants to do is to change the political structure of Europe.
John Mariani: "Gluttony, Reconsidered"

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Street Fighting Men
I forgot to mention that in addition to reading tons of expresso stories, I digest a pretty fair-sized chunk of interviews every week.
Back in the late 70s Manchester was a stronghold of Britain's premier far-right party, the National Front. As factories and communities went down they went up, recruiting at pubs and football matches, bolstered by a backdrop of fear, poverty, ignorance and desperation. They strutted through the town's grey streets by day, cudgelling random blacks and gays in dark alleys at night. Kicking around and insulting lefty paper sellers was another hobby. That was until a few young working-class activists, centred initially round the Socialist Workers Party and the Anti-Nazi League, decided to fight back.
• No Retreat is a memoir from two veterans of these struggles [The gear is casual, but the faces are hard, sullen, full of mistrust. Angry-looking tattoos poke out from under smart shirt sleeves. The talk, in a melting pot of accents from across London’s council estates, is of football ‘firms’, lads and ‘jobs’ [robberies] ]
• · Again and again, Palm Digital has proven that the lives of ordinary people provide limitless material for stories Best Palm Books from Palm Digital Media; [One of the enduring mysteries in literary history is how a unsophisticated Slav tricked Canadian Publisher into shedding light on the the mess and tragedy of existence. This postmodern sole survivor story is as absurd as it is disturbing. Then I Looked Alive: existential allegory of exile]
• · · Bridget Jones' 1920s diary found 17-year-old Miss P grew up during the "roaring" decade
• · · · Whenever I tell somebody what my plans are--and I’ve been talking about this for a year now--the inevitable question is, ‘Well, what are you going to do?’ And I say, ‘Nothing.’ I guess the work ethic is so pronounced in this country that the idea of doing nothing seems almost a crime, or a sin or some kind of blasphemy ; [Best-sellers: The art of screen advertising ]
• · · · · The most important is that the writer's original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader's. Running a close second was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference
• · · · · · ImRich Site Summary (RSS) What the Blog?: Literary Blogger Summit