Somewhere, in the so-far unseen pages of your work in progress — or the pages of WIPs gone by — somewhere lurks a phrase so graceless, a metaphor so aluminum-foil-on-dental-fillings, a sentence so raggedy-ass, a title so forgettable or a character’s name so laughable, something that made you realize you may be a writer but [...]

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From whiskey river (first stanza):
Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for [...]

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Single-minded in pursuit of your ideals, are you? Think you’re putting a lot of time into your writing, your painting, your kids, your life? You call yourself dedicated?
Ha!
Or so I thought when I saw the video below. The maker claims to have spent 1500 hours on this not-quite-four-minute project, an estimate which I see no [...]

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[The post below uses the words author and artist more or less interchangeably. Apologies to those in either camp who might dispute the lumping-together.]
A long-time friend and I have kidded each other for years about being disingenuous. This started, as I recall, when I once teased her in terms like, “You’re even more disingenuous than [...]

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From whiskey river:
Waking at 3 a.m.
Even in the cave of the night when you
wake and are free and lonely,
neglected by others, discarded, loved only
by what doesn’t matter — even in that
big room no one can see,
you push with your eyes till forever
comes in its twisted figure eight
and lies down in your head.
You think water in [...]

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A famous translation exercise (well, famous among wordish-nerdish types) takes the phrase “one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” translates it into Russian, and then back again into English. I can’t find the result online anywhere (maybe the exercise isn’t as famous as I’d thought), at least without buying access to a document apparently by [...]

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Per agent Janet Reid, who called her post “Stop what you’re doing and watch this” (a title which is hard to improve on, and I didn’t even try):

As Janet says, for some context you can read this blog post.

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[Image above shows the Parthenon, and its reflection in the facade of the New Acropolis Museum. Click image for more information and the original photo.]
From whiskey river:
Just Thinking
Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.
Been on probation most of my life. And
the [...]

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My review of this book is now online, over at The Book Book.
Short version:

Non-fiction, written by a neurogeneticist and evolutionary biologist.
Based on fairly current research. Informative. (Especially on the question of what makes you turn your head at someone, or not — at least if they’re within sniffing range.)
Not as provocative as you might imagine, [...]

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Thomas Pynchon’s newest hit the bookstores a week ago. Penguin Press’s description:
Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon — private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog
It’s been awhile since Doc [...]

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