September 2008
28 posts
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WatchHUNGER
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WatchBALLAST
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Writers' Rooms
From the Guardian’s ongoing Writers’ Rooms Series.
Roald Dahl’s shed behind his home, in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire.
Seamus Heaney’s attic in his Dublin home.
Raymond Briggs’s desk where he writes, illustrates, and designs.
Will Self’s room in South London.
Jonathan Safran Foer at the Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza.
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Fall Reading
The arrival of Autumn meant trips to the library on Saturday mornings. Tall stacks of precariously balanced books, carried carefully to the checkout desk. Books that would follow you home, to be read during the long cold months ahead, under blankets and sometimes in secret, late at night.
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“The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and...”
– Francois Truffaut
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WatchJohn Cassavetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara on the The Dick Cavett Show (1970)
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paintings by Joan Mitchell
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“Think for a second—what if all the infinitely dense and shifting worlds of stuff...”
– David Foster Wallace from “Good Old Neon”
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WatchDavid Foster Wallace on Charlie Rose (1997).
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Tyranny of the Test: One Year As a Kaplan Coach in...
Jeremy Miller, a former NYC teacher, wrote a terrific article in the current issue issue of Harper’s about his experience as a Kaplan tutor in the New York City school system. No Child Left Behind’s shortcomings have been discussed and written about exhaustively. What’s been under reported, and what Miller discussed here, is the way private companies such as Kaplan have...
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The Lost World of Richard Yates
Richard Yates, in 1991 just a year before his death, at age 66.
During the final illness wracked years of his life Yates required an oxygen tank to breath but still smoked incessantly. It was reported that he could be found driving around the University of Alabama, where he taught, puffing cigarettes and inhaling oxygen intermittently. He was working on his final novel, ‘Uncertain Times’,...
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WatchPlaying the Building
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YOU GOTTA HAVE ART! DRAWINGS BY ELIZABETH LAYTON
Elizabeth Layton didn’t begin drawing until 1977, when she was 68 years old. Struggling with bi-polar illness and profound depression she enrolled in a drawing class at a local university in Wellsville, Kansas. These are some of the drawings she produced between 1977 and 1981. More can be found at www.elizabethlayton.com.
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“She had not been to party in a long time and had forgotten the feelings that...”
– from “Moving On” by Larry McMurtry 