“Home, we drank a little wine, put on some of that sticky saxophone music we used to keep around to drown out the bitter squeaks in our hearts.”
– Sam Lipsyte
“For the first time in years, he felt the deep sadness of exile, knowing that he was alone here, an outsider, and too alert to the ironies, the niceties, the manners, and indeed, the morals to be able to participate.”
– Colm Toibin
First of all, we can play the time-honored game who suffered the most:
” You think you had it rough this year? During my fast, I got such a bad headache that one of my eyes popped out of its socket.”
“Oh yeah, my fast was so bad I passed out and went into a coma.”
“You think yours was bad? Heh! Not only do I have the Yom Kippur a headache, but my Rabbi’s sermonwas six hours long, and he copied it from the Democratic Party position papers. It was so bad few congregants killed themselves so they wouldn’t have to hear him speak anymore.
Super pod of 80 whales filmed feeding off NSW's Sapphire Coast
Grab a tissue box, here’s the ultimate sad song playlist
The Melbourne fan from central casting drives a Range Rover, votes Liberal and decamps for the snow when their football team loses. Bulldogs diehards are “battlers” from Melbourne’s lowly western suburbs, more likely to wear a blue collar than white.
On the surface, next weekend’s AFL grand final would appear to pit supporter bases from two different walks of life against each other. The haves and the have-nots. Meat pie eaters against cheeseboard noshers. Or, as one comedian tweeted, landlords v tenants.
Landlords v tenants? Jokes aside, Dees and Dogs fans share similarities
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Heathcote Williams’s Credo ‘If Poetry Isn’t Revolutionary, It’s Nothing’
Seven Brothers
At the BBC Lizzie Enfield writes at some length about Aleksis Kivi's Seven Brothers: The book that shaped a Nordic identity -- noting, for example:
Like many novels that would later become classics, at the time of its publication Seven Brothers was not so well received. It was ahead of its time. Literary critics described the book as disgraceful and ridiculous. August Ahlqvist, a Finnish poet and professor of language and literature, wrote the first review of the book and highlighted its vulgarities and rudeness -- cursing, lewd language, the parodying of priests and violence. Two years later, the Finnish Literature Society started to sell the original novel with a preface containing an apology for the uncultivated content of the novel.See also my review.
Richard Johnson Is Getting Back in the Gossip Game
In a throwback to the tabloid wars of yore, the famed (and feared) former New York Post scribe is ditching retirement to dish for the Daily News. “I’…
Of Writing And The Usefulness Of Cliches
Knox is on a mission to reclaim her life's narrative and oust the "most salacious and less true version of what happened to me in Italy" that "keeps being regurgitated".
But she also wants to "start a discussion about so-called 'inspired by real life' stories that you see being churned out in Hollywood again and again".
"The spotlight was turned on me against my desire, and I can't turn it off. I can't control that spotlight. What I can do is hold up a mirror to it."
Amanda Knox wants storytellers to understand their power and that 'inspired by' stories can hurt