Bluesday
Sure are fighting the downiness. Best thing for one of us is the full-on Hair and Toe Do Day, which worked its magic for a little while.
The latest issue of the New York Review of Books is full of good pieces. One is about Joyce Carol Oates, whose fiction I have not been able to appreciate, but whose literary criticism I do like. She's prolific to the point of disbelief, but she and her husband don't have kids, which is a time saver. I've only read a couple of her novels from the 1970's, and this article made me want to take another look at her work. Here's an excerpt from her journals:"The obvious motive for much of literature is the assuaging of homesickness, for a place or a time now vanished; less obviously, to the reader kept at a little distance by the writer's coolly crafted 'art', the motive may be to assuage hurt and/or to rationalize it." Perhaps just some of her "doodling", but certainly one solid idea about a function of literature.
The latest issue of the New York Review of Books is full of good pieces. One is about Joyce Carol Oates, whose fiction I have not been able to appreciate, but whose literary criticism I do like. She's prolific to the point of disbelief, but she and her husband don't have kids, which is a time saver. I've only read a couple of her novels from the 1970's, and this article made me want to take another look at her work. Here's an excerpt from her journals:"The obvious motive for much of literature is the assuaging of homesickness, for a place or a time now vanished; less obviously, to the reader kept at a little distance by the writer's coolly crafted 'art', the motive may be to assuage hurt and/or to rationalize it." Perhaps just some of her "doodling", but certainly one solid idea about a function of literature.
posted by isabelita at 12:39 PM
3 Comments:
A new NYRB! there's something to look forward to when I get home!
Remember our faux poet Steve Crow (or maybe he wasn't - I never followed his career) in Bowling Green had an autographed picture of JCO hanging in his apartment?
I'd forgotten about him. I Googled him, found he'd started PhD work up in Minnesota in 1979, did some work for U of NM, then ...? Guess he really was Cherokee; I was always skeptical of people's claims to Indian blood.
I like the NYRB, I do. So why do I let it pile up in unread stacks? Like every other periodical that comes into this house? I need to cut back on the subscriptions, I think.
I know I've read some of JCO's novels, but I can't remember the names of any of them off the top of my head other than We Were The Mulvaneys.
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