This is my first non-art, non-fiction book. It’s a little book (7″ x 7″) available through Blurb.com. The book summaries forty plus years of wisdom I’ve borrowed, evolved, and stolen from a large number of sources. It’s meant to be an informal guide to THINGS THAT WORK in everyday communication, especially with couples. The acronyms and phrases are simple, some merely “common sense” (which seems to disappear in daily communication), and some you may not have heard before.
Send me more and I’ll credit you in Book II.
Click on the Blurb logo and it will take you to the book. You can actually buy it!
Thankfully I live in world half ignorant of media. I miss a lot of things, occasionally I follow a thread to some discovery only to realize that only three million people watched this. Ah, so. and So it goes.
This was my experience with JFC (John From Cincinnati.) Wikipedia could fill in some of the blanks, but after my experience of “discovering” the show I didn’t want to read what other people had said about it. I had been looking for a new series to watch on DVD. I am in the middle of the (5th?) season of THE WIRE, which I love, but THE WIRE is tough for me to sustain an interest in. Why? It’s so realistic, it’s depressing. I’ve heard the authors are liberal guys, but where is the hope? Damn. It paints a picture of corruption and human frailty that makes every character an anti-hero. Bare bones comic relief. Mostly just hardcore living in a world of greed, betrayal and failure. It’s just something I’m always prepared to watch and call it fun.
I’m waiting for the next season of BREAKING BAD to come out on DVD, as it hasn’t reached the addictive stage where I have to download it from iTunes, like I do for MAD MEN and LOST. Yes, I confess. I love BREAKING BAD, but again, it’s pretty damn dark. A guy with terminal cancer, with a pregnant wife and no money decides to supplement his high school chemistry teacher salary by becoming an (excellent) meth cooker. I can’t even make that sound light by telling saying there are tons of fun, quirky characters. Dark, dark, dark. Read More »
1. Each person disclose what prevented you from reading the book. Compare and contrast.
2. Compare cover art on the various editions. Which made you want to read the book least?
3. Discuss whether your inability to read this book is specific to this book (expound on this) or had to do more with “life conditions.” If the latter
please share the most amusing anecdote from you life that illustrates why you couldn’t read this book.
4. Discuss xenophobia and how it may have contributed to your inability to read this book. What books by other international authors are you unlikely to read. Why?
5. Could you suggest an antidote to this experience (of not reading this book)? If it was a book what would it be? Discuss.
6. If you had read the book, would you feel smarter now? Why or why not?
If my title is not cynical, what can I possibly mean when funds are being cut to non-profits, when people look twice at the cost of theater tickets and stay home to watch broadcast television, and even masterpieces fail to bring in money for Christies? All luxury or nonessential purchases like books and art will be scaled back. Strapped corporations and executives are dumping their vanity collections onto the prestige auction houses who are seeing prices and attendance fall precipitously. Many art-related businesses will fail, including bookstores, theater companies, galleries, even museums. Surely this is a time for a great wailing to arise in the land of the creatives, who have already pinned their last hopes on a new W.P.A program that will surely be announced soon.
So why in God’s name would this be a good time to be an artist or writer? Read More »
The voice of Paul Reyment in SLOW MAN is very similar to the main character in Iris Murdoch’s novel THE SEA, THE SEA. They are both older, white, Brit (empire), educated, artistic, lonely men who have strong feelings, clear thoughts, but don’t hold to a certain philosophical structure (say, Christianity or leftist politics) that color everything. They are intelligent freelancers in life, aware that, given their age, it is highly unlikely that they will ever get answers to the philosophical questions they continue to ask (mostly of themselves) and nearly all the time. Read More »
What show did I see of Philip Guston’s work? It’s the prerogative of the amateur to neither care nor remember, however, I do remember not being particularly excited about his work. I saw it in Chicago and for some reason I thought he was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where some of my friends still teach). Even if I got all my facts wrong (and who knows, he could have been a visiting artist there) he was solidly IN MY MIND in the school of Chicago Imagism which I still revere. This school includes Roger Brown, Jim Nutt and H. C. Westermann. Given that kind of company, artists unabashedly “pro-image”, Guston’s work seemed uninteresting. Sure I could see there were social critical themes underneath (why else all the Klansmen?) but they weren’t painted in a way that shouted at you (like Diego Rivera shouts “Marxism Good!”) nor were they interesting to me as images. I didn’t even like his signature “flesh rose” or whatever it was. So, I dismissed him. Wrong!
I’m surprised Googling “apocalyptic ennui” didn’t deliver much, just a few quirky blogs and song lyrics. Maybe that means it’s a really meaningful connection of the two words. I realized when writing my review of “Boys Adrift” that apocalyptic ennui is a significant part of my psychology and inevitably my politics at the moment. Growing up in the 60’s (fear or nuclear war) then switching to “hippie” fears (global cooling, nuclear war, the draft, American culture generally, unhealthy food and religion) was exhausting enough. I wasn’t ready to get on the next bandwagon: global warming, global capitalism, American culture–especially overseas, antibiotics in food leading to new killer bacteria, killer viruses like Ebola, terrorism at home and abroad, destruction of species, inequality of wealth–leading to revolutions, crash of the dollar, depletion of oil, ethanol destroying the food supplies, and the inevitable Islamic takeover of Europe–perhaps leading to an imminent crash of the West. Read More »
It’s not that the writing is so bad, it’s not. It’s OK. But if a white male (without proper credentials via biography) wrote this, it would never have been published. Though ostensibly fiction, what seems inherent in the attraction of the book is the authenticity of the story. This is a person who’s “been there” not unlike the book A LONG WAY GONE by Ishmael Beah (which my son is reading now). Here’s the thing: one can’t suppress the sense that it is the STORY these people (or people close to them) have lived that makes us read on. These are tragic and dramatic stories. That does not mean, however, that this is necessarily “good writing” (in the same way Graham Greene is good writing, or Patricia Highsmith, both favorites of the moment). Read More »
So finally I find this incredible writer. How did I find her, I’m not even sure now. Oh, I remember, I was looking into “literary thriller” lists on the net and her name came up. Since Hitchcock did her “Strangers on a Train” I thought it would be fun to read it, then see the movie. Read More »
Letter to the Editor, published in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 07-18-07
As a recovering hippie who reads The Wall Street Journal (apparently there are a few of us out here), I felt one perspective was missing from the Ted Nugent discussion (Letters, July 14). Read More »
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