“If we didn’t read people who were bastards, we’d never read anything,” says Mary Karr. “Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards” Fallen Idols
When it comes to ideas, be a flirt, says Ben Kafka. Make everything unstable, uncertain; test the limits of your knowledge. Risk a slide into dilettantism. What sorts of explanations do we offer,” Kafka writes, “what sorts of anecdotes do we share, what sorts of ridicule do we heap on that man or woman on the other side of the desk or telephone?” He regards paperwork as one of the most ubiquitous, least understood forms of media in modern history
Portrait of madness. Shirley Jackson experimented with voodoo and tried to raise the devil. Her writing conveyed its own shock Nothing Like Being Scared