The Great Irish Writer Who Died Homeless In New York
Maeve Brennan “would not have left Ireland at the age of 17 if she’d been given the choice, and yet in her adult years she didn’t choose to return. A displaced person, always on provisional ground. When writing about New York City she described herself as a ‘traveler in residence.’ She was staying for a while, poised to depart. And in that displacement she may be a figure for the Irish American a little disoriented as to notions of home, or for any immigrant who finds herself elsewhere without having chosen to leave where she came from.”
IG:vhutali.n 🇿🇦 on Twitter: "For us to be Successful we go through Media Dragon like Difficult things ...
I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to lie in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not overanxious about your own comic fallibilities; that gives you tranquility without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself.
— Hugh Walpole, born in 1884
Sometimes I Lie, Alice Feeney, (Macmillan/Flatiron,March 13, 2018) — this one is SO twisty, that it lost several readers. The title itself warns readers that this is they’re dealing with the ultimate in unreliable narrators
Dadon: The secret to blogging success
Tara Westover's new book is Educated: A Memoir. One of four memoirs that moved her as a reader, then as a writer, as shared at the Waterstones blog:
The Year of Magical Thinking is among Mark Whitaker's six favorite memoirs, Adam Haslett's five best deathless accounts of mourning,Douglas Kennedy's top ten books about grief, and Norris Church Mailer's five best memoirs. It is a book that made a difference to Samantha Bee.
--Marshal Zeringue
Compared with the heyday of antiques collecting, prices for average pieces are now “80 percent off,” said Colin Stair, the owner of Stair Galleries auction house in Hudson, N.Y. “Your typical Georgian 18th century furniture, chests of drawers, tripod tables, Pembroke tables,” he noted, can all be had for a fraction of what they cost 15 to 20 years ago.
That is from Tim McKeough at the NYT, there is plenty more evidence in the article
The only thing that could keep me away from Andrew Sean Greer's Pasadena reading this evening is teaching, and unfortunately I have a class tonight. But otherwise I would make the trek for Greer's only L.A. appearance to hear him read from his latest novel, "The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells."
I am a longtime fan of Greer's fiction - he was my first author interview here at TEV all those years ago - and I'm eager to crack open the covers on this one. (We've also appeared together at LAPL ALOUD, and he was kind enough to blurb my first novel.)
He's an engaging reader, and is very much worth making the trip for. I hope you'll head out to Pasadena this evening, and support a tremendous novelist and a fine independent bookstore. What could be better, right?
“No one tells the secrets of the human heart more bravely or eloquently than Andrew Sean Greer. He has been called our Proust, our Nabokov, but with this novel he transcends all comparison. This is a genius-stroke of a book. Read it and weep.”— Julie Orringer
The Encore: A Memoir in Three Acts, Charity Tillemann-Dick, (S&S/Atria, October 3) — an opera singer continues her career despite having BOTH lungs transplanted.Counting Backwards: A Doctor’s Notes on Anesthesia, Henry Jay Przybylo, (Norton, November 14), — “takes you past the forbidden operating room doors into the O.R.”In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope, Rana Awdish, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, October 24) — A doctor learns first hand the flaws in current medical practice when she nearly dies herself.The Cookie Cure: A Mother/Daughter Memoir of Cookies and Cancer, Susan Stachler, Laura Stachler, (Sourcebooks, February 1, 2018) — “an almost unbelievable story of medical coincidence.”
Some of you may remember an earlier time when medical narratives were all the rage. GalleyChatter Robin Beerbower says they’ve never gone out of style for her. She remembers, “Back in the late 70s I read Elder’s And I Alone Survived, which fueled my obsession with survival stories. My medical obsession started in the early 1970s with James Kerr’s soap opera-ish novel The Clinic and, of course, Hailey’s Diagnosis. About 30 years ago Echo Heron publishedIntensive Care, about her stint as a nurse, along with Carol Gino’sThe Nurse’s Story. Like many library patrons, I couldn’t get enough of these kinds of stories.”
Below is a transcript. If it does not load, or you prefer reading it in story form, link here.
Dadon: The secret to blogging success
How to get a buzz out of backyard beekeeping Telegraph
A look back at postwar British experimental literature, publishing blank pages and rejecting Kingsley Amis.↩︎ The GuardianHe arrived in America in 1774, broke and sick. Two years later, he was at the heart of the revolutionary movement.Thomas Paine has quite a story... ME Paine
3D-Printed Houses That Can Be Built In a Day
Using the Vulcan printer, ICON can print an entire home for $10,000 and plans to bring costs down to $4,000 per house. “It’s much cheaper than the typical American home." It’s capable of printing a home that’s 800 square feet, a significantly bigger structure than properties pushed by the tiny home movement, which top out at about 400 square feet. In contrast, the average New York apartment is about 866 square feet. … Read More
THAT BOHEMIAN SELFIE:
Yes, it’s two penguins in Antarctica. Yes, they stumbled upon a camera left by
a human. Here’s the full story, by the
Washington Post’s Amy B. Wang. And, oh yeah, an image from the 38-second
video. Have a good day!
Screengrab
/ Australian Antarctic Division
Former ATO deputy commissioner Michael Cranston's trial date set
Mr Cranston's son Adam was arrested during Australian Federal Police raids in May over his alleged masterminding of the $144 million Plutus Payroll fraud tax fraud. Adam Cranston faces a string of criminal charges over the scheme, while Michael Cranston has been charged over his attempts to discover ...
A lot of people say that a picture paints a thousand words, but none make that more obvious thanlifeimagesbyjill.blogspot.com.au. The blog features some truly stunning and authentic images, coupled with some content that are truly sincere. lifeimagesbyjill.blogspot.com.au offers a glimpse into a rich life, which makes it worth nominating.
It’s so important, answering it will determine your destiny as a writer
Secret NYPD files show rampant officer violence against innocents—and taxpayers foot millions in coverups
↩︎ BuzzFeed
In 1905 the poet George Sterling established an artists' colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. Then things got dark: murders and suicide pacts... Pacts
In 2005, Irish writer John Banville told University of Philadelphia creative writing students: "The writing of fiction is far more than the telling of stories. It is an ancient, an elemental, urge which springs, like the dream, from a desperate imperative to encode and preserve things that are buried in us deep beyond words."
A look back at postwar British experimental literature, publishing blank pages and rejecting Kingsley Amis.↩︎ The GuardianHe arrived in America in 1774, broke and sick. Two years later, he was at the heart of the revolutionary movement.Thomas Paine has quite a story... ME Paine
THAT BOHEMIAN SELFIE:
Yes, it’s two penguins in Antarctica. Yes, they stumbled upon a camera left by
a human. Here’s the full story, by the
Washington Post’s Amy B. Wang. And, oh yeah, an image from the 38-second
video. Have a good day!
Screengrab
/ Australian Antarctic DivisionFormer ATO deputy commissioner Michael Cranston's trial date set
Mr Cranston's son Adam was arrested during Australian Federal Police raids in May over his alleged masterminding of the $144 million Plutus Payroll fraud tax fraud. Adam Cranston faces a string of criminal charges over the scheme, while Michael Cranston has been charged over his attempts to discover ...
A lot of people say that a picture paints a thousand words, but none make that more obvious thanlifeimagesbyjill.blogspot.com.au. The blog features some truly stunning and authentic images, coupled with some content that are truly sincere. lifeimagesbyjill.blogspot.com.au offers a glimpse into a rich life, which makes it worth nominating.
It’s so important, answering it will determine your destiny as a writer
Secret NYPD files show rampant officer violence against innocents—and taxpayers foot millions in coverups
↩︎ BuzzFeed
In 1905 the poet George Sterling established an artists' colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. Then things got dark: murders and suicide pacts... Pacts
In 2005, Irish writer John Banville told University of Philadelphia creative writing students: "The writing of fiction is far more than the telling of stories. It is an ancient, an elemental, urge which springs, like the dream, from a desperate imperative to encode and preserve things that are buried in us deep beyond words."
Four top inspirational memoirs
Tara Westover's new book is Educated: A Memoir. One of four memoirs that moved her as a reader, then as a writer, as shared at the Waterstones blog:The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan DidionRead about another entry on the list.
Didion’s husband had a heart attack during dinner; he did not survive. Didion chronicles the year after his death, and her own feelings about it, in what has been described as a manual for grief for the agnostic. If believers have the Bible, and the warm comfort of belief in an afterlife, non-believers have Joan Didion,and her thoughtful reckoning with the senselessness of death and the insanity of grief. She writes: “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.…We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.”
The Year of Magical Thinking is among Mark Whitaker's six favorite memoirs, Adam Haslett's five best deathless accounts of mourning,Douglas Kennedy's top ten books about grief, and Norris Church Mailer's five best memoirs. It is a book that made a difference to Samantha Bee.
--Marshal Zeringue