Literary Zen XI

There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire. *Perhaps a better caption would be, Willem Defoe as Arthur Schopenhauer, which is why I shan’t give up … Read more

Straight On Through*

You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless -there is only one thing to do with a novel [or anything important**] and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing. Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald in a 1929 letter from France, courtesy the New … Read more

Two Learnings from My Recent Rememborizing Efforts: One cool; One cautionary

As I discussed in my last post, I’ve embarked on an effort to memorize stuff that interests me. I’m finding that the more I memorize stuff, the easier is to memorize and retain new stuff.

So as I just finished up memorizing the poem Invictus, I decided to go large and take on the grandest, and perhaps greatest, of all letters penned on behalf of these United States, The Declaration of Independence.

Yeah, maybe I am getting a little cocky/in over my head taking on such a significant body of work — significant as in packed with meaning, and, especially, significant as in packed with a lot of words. One-thousand, four-hundred and fifty-eight of them to be exact.

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Now that I’ve the Time

A couple days ago, I wrote a painfully long post called The Irrepressible Nature of Irony.

I mean, dude*, it is a massive monster of a missive.

I mean, wow.

Anyway, as a mea culpa, of sorts, for torturing you with such interminablely tedious twaddle, I left a footnote that reads:

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Don’t be a Doormat

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. ― Rebecca West #notetoself #timesup

While Hacking at a Log

I wonder… What is more important to most readers of literature… Just the words as they are written? Or the why the words were written – the author’s motivation? Or the how the words were written – the author’s background? When reading a thesis that may influence one’s medical or legal decisions, knowing that the … Read more