Reading is So Delicious by Lucy Knisley (source)

Reading is So Delicious by Lucy Knisley (source)

Jim Fahey by Eileen Myles

mysterysmudgesextra:

I’m deep into The Importance of Being Iceland, a collection of travel essays in art, all by EM herself. I got it in September, but I only started reading it in early October. I have dog-eared a lot of pages, and tumbl’d a lot of quotes. This book is resonating with me, in significant ways, and often. Here are excerpts that really hit me, from an essay she wrote about going to therapy. Jim Fahey is the name of her therapist. 

I had a job, but I didn’t have enough money for say a hundred dollars a week. I needed a cheap shrink. The whole thing was beyond me, but I really was in trouble and was willing to pay somebody to be on my side. That was how I felt about it. Everyone was either Jewish or middle-class in new York and they all had shrinks. So I was going into the inside room in the world that I knew. It was not church, it was not God. I was pretending there was an inside of me, and it could be found in a room in the world. (page 256) 

I had amazing moments with him [Fahey]. I remember the morning, honey coloured, the room got mellow and deep when he asked me Eileen can you tell me any time in your life when you did feel safe. It was like a thunderclap. Before my father died. It was like my life folded. I did have an inside. I just hadn’t been in it for most of my life. I had a home. It was gone. It was devastating. (page 257)

I was doing a performance and I invited him. I didn’t know if it was right. but I did. And there I was performing and looking down I saw Jim and I’m not sure it was a good feeling. I didn’t know if it was right. And when we talked about it he told me that after I performed I looked at the audience and I smiled, but it was an uncomfortable smile. Not open, maybe kind of false. I think I smiled in response to that and he said like that. I felt like I knew what he was talking about but I didn’t need to have him tell me about how creepy I was. I mean it was already hard to have this kind of dry heart, or feel you looked that way, like a hard window. (page 258)

» How to Balance Writing, Reading, Being a Human

fwriction:

Writing for Specter Literary Magazine, former fwriction : review contributor Brett Elizabeth Jenkins asks one of the most difficult questions, one I struggle with daily: how do you balance life and writing?

What sucks is that most of us, if we call ourselves writers, don’t get paid for what we love to do. Some of us enjoy teaching, and we do it. And some of us really love it. But some of us just love writing and can’t find anybody willing to dole out tons of money to us just so we can sit in a room all day without having to see other humans.

“My idea of a solution is to say screw it, and let the apartment look like a rhinoceros went ice skating in here. I go three weeks without writing a damn thing. I find time to do the things that absolutely need to get done right now, like eating, and having sex, and leaving for work, and occasionally mailing a Netflix disc. Eventually I will sit down and the words will come erupting out of me, because if they don’t I will twist somebody’s head off. And that’s how I live.” 

nevver: THXTHXTHX Reblogging because I was reading Robert Coover’s The End of Books yesterday, and he says something similar to this. 

nevver:

THXTHXTHX

Reblogging because I was reading Robert Coover’s The End of Books yesterday, and he says something similar to this. 

britticisms: People Don’t Like to Read Art (2009) by Deb Sokolow

britticisms:

People Don’t Like to Read Art (2009) by Deb Sokolow

(Source: unbuiltroads)

(via unicornology)

viafrank: I created a PDF of The Gullet series for printing and keeping. You can download it here. I’ve been meaning to do this for a bit: this should be the best way to read and enjoy. (Much easier than on the silly blog, that is.) Go! Download! Here are a few ideas of what you can do with it: Print it out and fold 13 different kinds of paper airplanes. Race them against one another, then report back with the results. Print it and give it to a friend. When they ask what it is, reply “I do not know. Some guy on the internet told me to do this.” If you can shift your eyes back and forth suspiciously like a llama, now would be the time to do so. Watch the head of the printer go back and forth. Swat at it like a cat. Crumple up all the pages you printed, then strategically place them in the middle of your cubicle, saying it is an art installation about the futility and elusiveness of good ideas. Make a paper boat and a pirate hat. Sit on the carpet, wearing your scarf and bandeau, and curse your coworkers as they walk by, calling them “scallywags” or “vagrants.” Print then immediately place in the recycling bin. Say it is a “new and urgent” form of criticism. Pull out your paper shredder. Print the PDF, then shred. Kitty litter. Have your cat say it is a “new and urgent” form of “criticism.” Print it out and read it.

viafrank:

I created a PDF of The Gullet series for printing and keeping. You can download it here. I’ve been meaning to do this for a bit: this should be the best way to read and enjoy. (Much easier than on the silly blog, that is.) Go! Download! Here are a few ideas of what you can do with it:

  • Print it out and fold 13 different kinds of paper airplanes. Race them against one another, then report back with the results.
  • Print it and give it to a friend. When they ask what it is, reply “I do not know. Some guy on the internet told me to do this.” If you can shift your eyes back and forth suspiciously like a llama, now would be the time to do so.
  • Watch the head of the printer go back and forth. Swat at it like a cat.
  • Crumple up all the pages you printed, then strategically place them in the middle of your cubicle, saying it is an art installation about the futility and elusiveness of good ideas.
  • Make a paper boat and a pirate hat. Sit on the carpet, wearing your scarf and bandeau, and curse your coworkers as they walk by, calling them “scallywags” or “vagrants.”
  • Print then immediately place in the recycling bin. Say it is a “new and urgent” form of criticism.
  • Pull out your paper shredder. Print the PDF, then shred. Kitty litter. Have your cat say it is a “new and urgent” form of “criticism.”
  • Print it out and read it.
“Yet who reads to bring about an end, however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practice because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards - their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble - the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.”
– Virginia Woolf, How Should One Read a Book?

» The Great 2010 Book Preview

A list of the “most anticipated” books coming out this year compiled by The Millions, for the reference of you bibliophiles out there (via kottke)