— Saul Bellow, on science and art from his Nobel lecture in 1976
“A person dies but things remain. A chair. Cigarette butts. The memory of a foot. And maybe the song he used to whistle, which she couldn’t remember now. It was unbelievable that she couldn’t remember it. But maybe his whistling was like the plastic bags still roaming over the desert. A person dies, but his whistling still runs on the wind, crossing roads and ravines getting tangled in the sand and junk.”
—thoughts of Sirkit, widow.
Sure, it's only October and there are more than two months left in the year but, hey, if there are TV channels that have started their Countdown to Christmas why shouldn't publications start listing their books-of-the-year.
First up: Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2018.
Many, many more of these will be appearing in the coming weeks.
Saving ancient suburbia one photo at a time Every day Warren Kirk loads his one-eyed dog Ocky into a van, and goes looking for the people, buildings and stories of an Australia that's being renovated and erased out of existence
Growing Up in the Library | The New Yorker
It wasn’t that time stopped in the library. It was as if it were captured here, collected here, and in all libraries—and not only my time, my life, but all human time as well. In the library, time is dammed up—not just stopped but saved. The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever.
He entered the world screaming
In the way that all of us do;
There were cold hands, shining lights
And a brief taste of metal
Before finally being drawn
To heartbeating warmth, and life.
He went through life dreaming
In the way that some of us do.
There was love, shining bright,
To help him prove his mettle
Even when downtrodden, worn.
Yet still the joys were rife.
He left the clinic feeling,
In the way that most of us do,
That there were options: fight, fright or flight?
Blood in his mouth brought back metal.
For him there would be no new dawn.
Yet in one life, he'd lived a thousand lives.
He left the world reeling
In a way that few of us do:
Barbiturates freezing his throat tight
With a cold taste of metal
Before being mercifully torn
At his behest, from his life.
“It’s actually rather misleading, isn’t it, the walk up to Black Bull Rocks? The path isn’t as direct as it looks from the bottom of the hill. There are several narrow gorges or valleys on the way. The path drops down steeply and climbs up and out of each of these… And the streams through each of these are running high at this time of year so it’s not always a simple matter getting across them….”—interview of Charlotte, mother of the missing Becky Shaw.
Nothing like a former CIA agent to help navigate treacherous law enforcement stories ...
Indonesian policewomen measured through 'purity and beauty', subjected to virginity testing
First up: Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2018.
Many, many more of these will be appearing in the coming weeks.
Saving ancient suburbia one photo at a time Every day Warren Kirk loads his one-eyed dog Ocky into a van, and goes looking for the people, buildings and stories of an Australia that's being renovated and erased out of existence
Stephen King's Unusual Film Deal
The author has sold the rights to one of his stories to some teenage film students for just $1.
Growing Up in the Library | The New Yorker
It wasn’t that time stopped in the library. It was as if it were captured here, collected here, and in all libraries—and not only my time, my life, but all human time as well. In the library, time is dammed up—not just stopped but saved. The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever.
He entered the world screaming
In the way that all of us do;
There were cold hands, shining lights
And a brief taste of metal
Before finally being drawn
To heartbeating warmth, and life.
He went through life dreaming
In the way that some of us do.
There was love, shining bright,
To help him prove his mettle
Even when downtrodden, worn.
Yet still the joys were rife.
He left the clinic feeling,
In the way that most of us do,
That there were options: fight, fright or flight?
Blood in his mouth brought back metal.
For him there would be no new dawn.
Yet in one life, he'd lived a thousand lives.
He left the world reeling
In a way that few of us do:
Barbiturates freezing his throat tight
With a cold taste of metal
Before being mercifully torn
At his behest, from his life.
“It’s actually rather misleading, isn’t it, the walk up to Black Bull Rocks? The path isn’t as direct as it looks from the bottom of the hill. There are several narrow gorges or valleys on the way. The path drops down steeply and climbs up and out of each of these… And the streams through each of these are running high at this time of year so it’s not always a simple matter getting across them….”—interview of Charlotte, mother of the missing Becky Shaw.
“I’m trying to impose some order on my memories. Every one of them is a piece of the puzzle, but many are missing, and most of them remain isolated. Sometimes I manage to connect three or four, but no more than that. So I jot down bits and pieces that come back to me in no particular order, lists of names or brief phrases. I hope that these names, like magnets, will draw others to the surface, and that those bits of sentences might end up forming paragraphs and chapters that link together.”
– Patrick Modiano
Nothing like a former CIA agent to help navigate treacherous law enforcement stories ...
Indonesian policewomen measured through 'purity and beauty', subjected to virginity testing