December 2011
45 posts
Stuff I wrote in 2011
For The New Republic, I reviewed Johanna Adorján’s memoir of her grandparents, Hungarian Jews who survived the Holocaust but committed suicide together in old age.
I published a piece in the Bygone Bureau about playing in the Kubb National Championships in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Kubb is a Swedish lawn sport that’s attracted a weird following in the U.S., particularly in Des Moines,...
“I believe that we ought so to love and trust God in our lives, and in all the...”
– Bonhoeffer again (via ayjay)
“He had no doctorate, for instance, and he seemed to find the idea of PhDs...”
– Geoff Nicholson on J.H. Prynne [via lareviewofbooks]
Mary Karr, "Descending Theology: Christ Human"
Such a short voyage for a god, and you arrived in animal form so as not to scorch us with your glory. Your mask was an infant’s head on a limp stalk, sticky eyes smeared blind, limbs rendered useless in swaddle. You came among beasts as one, came into our care or its lack, came crying as we all do, because the human frame is a crucifix, each skeletos borne a lifetime. Any wanting soul lain...
“Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our...”
– Fred Rogers (via misswallflower)
1 tag
“I don’t like this expression “First World problems.” It is false and it is...”
– Teju Cole on the “#firstworldproblems” meme, in a series of tweets compiled by Alexis Madrigal (via risenapes)
The trailer for The Hobbit →
“Fiction is about what it is to be a fucking human being”
– David Foster Wallace
I’m writing MFA application essays and thinking about what writing fiction means to me. This is the best answer I can think of.
“Unbeaten, nobody becomes a bishop.”
– One of the many bizarre Icelandic expressions I learned from my friend, the Icelandic poet and translator Magnus Sigurðsson.
“Christopher Hitchens, by common consent the greatest man of the last century and...”
– Letters: Reflections of the death of Christopher Hitchens | Books | The Guardian (via ayjay)
“As his visit to Britain last year confirmed, Benedict XVI is by no means the...”
– Tom Wright in TLS [via 3QuarksDaily]
1 tag
Rape affects almost 20% of US women, study says →
[The BBC via Flipboard]
“The Gospel came to the Greeks and the Greeks turned it into a philosophy. The...”
– The Problem with Pastor as Rock Star (via jmvane, azspot) (via ayjay)
welp, this is awkward
I’m pretty sure this guy has busted me and Ryne for pissing in the alley across the street from Danny’s a couple of years ago.
Sorry about that, guy. Poor form on our part.
bronxcheer:
I’ve worked door on Saturdays at Danny’s for over six years now. Danny’s is a small bar on a residential block in the bucktown neighborhood of Chicago. When I say...
3 tags
“The Soviet flavour of all this had been underscored at United Russia’s...”
– The Economist
“All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.”
– Dawn Powell (and the epigraph to Donald Ray Pollock’s Knockemstiff)
3 tags
“We felt we ran a good course for 70 years. Fought a good fight. We have no place...”
– Fewer Veterans to Remember Pearl Harbor Day
“Jisas yu holem hand blong mi,” from...
“The rest is all bullshit, Miss Drake. It’s as simple as that. And your...”
– from Carolyn Weber’s Surprised by Oxford reviewed in Books and Culture
“Later I drove back to the Congregational church to pick her up….Babette in...”
– J.A.K. Gladney in DeLillo’s White Noise
“You left the cocoon of Princeton when you were 16. Why?
I was a rebellious...”
– George Dyson - Looking Backward to Put New Technology in Focus - NYTimes.com (via ayjay)
“I’ve spent the last couple of weeks living in a monastery, largely to complete a...”
– The modern welfare state could learn a lot from the Medieval monastery - (via mwfrost)
“Trilling envied the raw creative genius of Ernest Hemingway, and indeed believed...”
– William Giraldi on Why Trilling Matters
“It’s nice to know that here in New England, one can still find mediocre...”
– A review of Longfellow Winter Ale over at Beer Advocate.
I was stoked to find a beer from Maine here in Sweden, but I’d agree with the reviewer. Except for the low prices bit. In fact, I just have the “why-am-wasting-my-money” feeling every time I buy beer in this...
