Sunday, February 19, 2023

Righteous Anger, Rightly Directed: Edouard Louis’s Books About Working-Class Poverty And Pain

To essay means to try, to endeavour, to attempt.  It implies risk and failure.  It is also the only way to find out whether something is possible.  These essays are a sort of written equivalent of hunting and gathering, of wandering with intent.  

They are the product of my own wandering among the conundrums and contradictions of the cross-cultural world I’ve chosen to inhabit, and of my intent to understand and honour it.


NEWS YOU CAN USE:  You Can’t Make Up for Lost Sleep by Snoozing on the Weekends.


According to The Washington Post, Richards dedicated hours to writing the book every day, all while practising law and raising three children. 

He would average only four hours of sleep a night for over a decade.

Lloyd spent 14 years writing a book that no one read. His daughter just made it a bestseller.


Righteous Anger, Rightly Directed: Edouard Louis’s Books About Working-Class Poverty And Pain

"Louis's depiction of poverty is more radical in its honesty. Deprivation doesn't just cause pain and hunger; it also fosters hostility. Circumstances warp behavior. ... Louis is scathing about the government's neglect of the working class, but he also makes no attempt to sugarcoat the psychological effects of poverty." - The Nation

Our culture is awash in “Easter eggs” — covert messages in songs, books, and film. Hunting for them is a waste of time... more »


How a canvas bag with reinforced handles and a flat bottom became a literary trophy and status symbol... more »



Buckminster Fuller was seen as a jack of all trades but master of just one: self-promotion   self 

DANGER IS EVERYWHERE:  Scalding hot instant noodles pose danger to kids.


15 Elvis Presley Quotes to Shake You Up | Inspiring Quotes


Clarice Lispector Q & A 

       In The New Yorker Benjamin Moser presents: "The longest and most wide-ranging interview that the great Brazilian author gave, here translated and published for the first time", in A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector
       Among her responses:

COLASANTI: Speaking of translation, that’s another one of those parallel activities of yours. You translate, quite a lot. 

LISPECTOR: I discovered a way to make it less annoying. What I do is I never read the book before I translate it. I go along sentence by sentence, because that way you’re carried along by curiosity to know what happens next, and time passes. Whereas if you’ve already read it it’s a chore. It scares me when I see it that way, three hundred pages to go.