I worked in a restaurant with Mexicans and white guys. The Mexicans worked hard. They had wives and sweethearts back home and pictures of kids in their wallets. The young one, Roberto, always had a paperback book stuck in his back pocket. We stayed late to give him rides home so the local boys wouldn’t beat him up. We pretended we had … More the Mexicans
I wrote a novel based on eugenics, but my agent didn’t like it. Once she didn’t like it, I found that I didn’t either. I thought the backstory was more interesting than the front story. I thought the whole section that takes place when the protagonist lives with a male prostitute in New York … More targeted for elimination
Dense, dreary and boring, one Amazon reviewer calls WG Sebold’s book, Austerlitz, like it doesn’t occur to him that he might simply be the wrong reader. Like maybe he doesn’t get it. Man Ray says if you don’t like something, turn away, go find something else. Which is hard to do but good to keep … More the wrong reader
I’ve begun my young adult novel yet again. How many ways can I write the same story? It was going to be my simple story, the one I wrote quickly, for fun. Oh, and my agent thought it would sell. Let’s be honest. The first version was disturbingly similar to the movie, The Sixth Sense. … More Three Queens
Adorno said that art, because of its association with class and because it objectifies, is inherently fascist. Did he really mean this or was he simply being provocative?
Why did I awake lonely Among the sleepers?
I was reading Night and helping plan a fundraiser for an elementary school in Gaza. I was reading Night and writing a novel that includes the Kabbalah, which is a form of mystical Judaism. The Kabbalah is also called The Tree of Life, and included in this Tree is its shadow, which is known … More another word for hell
Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.” ~~Paul Celan
> I was in a coffee shop today, reading a chapter about Camus, for my class. I was wondering how I missed the fact that The Plague is an allegory for Fascism, when I noticed a woman and her daughter getting their drinks from the counter. The little girl was 2 or 3 years old. … More leave the kids alone
The photographs of Chileans celebrating in the streets after Allende was elected remind me a little of the pictures of people here, after Obama’s election night. For a moment, goodness triumphed. And then it changed again. And then it was worse, more stupid and more cruel, than anyone could have imagined.
