literature – Jonathan Frei

Jonathan Frei — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 21:55:06 +0000

Drunk Texts from Famous Authors

By Jessie Gaynor via the – Paris Review.

[Pro-tip: click the images to see them full sized]

Internet commentor, fer cual fer had several more gems to add to the collection:

Hemingway: “There is a woman near the bar. I’ll try to score with her. Maybe get into some fight later on, with that man she’s talking to. Give him some good one two, like my old man used to say.”

Joyce: “I may be drunk i don’t know you would love these tiles on the floor they look pretty i wouldn’t know since im really drunk you always said I talked nonesense when i got too many cups what would you care i miss you im so hungry right now how much for the tequila shot again.”

Faulkner: “”Go away” Sherwood said, “Not until you edit my book” i said, “I said you go away” he said, “I insist” i said, “only if i don’t have to read it” he said, he smacked me on the head and took the book with him. And that’s how I became a writer.”

Melville: “Cabernet Sauvignon, often referred to as the “King of Red Wine Grapes,” originally from Bordeaux, with a substantial foothold in California’s wine races, has the privilege of being the world’s most sought after red wine. Cabernet Sauvignon grapes tend to favor warmer climates and are often an ideal wine for aging, with 5-10 years being optimal for the maturation process to peak. Because Cabs take a bit longer to reach maturation, allowing their flavors to mellow, they are ideal candidates for blending with other grapes, primarily Merlot. This blending softens the Cabernet, adding appealing fruit tones, without sacrificing its innate character, and me is having another glass, sea-dog.”

Brilliant.

Show this chart to the next person that says the Internet killed reading books

Jonathan Frei — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:28:29 +0000

Show this chart to the next person that says the Internet killed reading books

The act of reading books is alive and well. Radio didn’t kill it. Television didn’t kill it. The Internet didn’t Kill it.

Alexis Madrigal muses about Golden age of reading:

Remember the good old days when everyone read really good books, like, maybe in the post-war years when everyone appreciated a good use of the semi-colon? Everyone’s favorite book was by Faulkner or Woolf or Roth. We were a civilized civilization. This was before the Internet and cable television, and so people had these, like, wholly different desires and attention spans. They just craved, craved, craved the erudition and cultivation of our literary kings and queens.

That time wasn’t in some bygone era. That time is now. Grab a book and join the fun!

Romance authors get a free pass

Jonathan Frei — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:30:05 +0000

Romance authors get a free pass

Maria Bustillos on romance novels:

So there’s no sniffy condescension or po-mo posturing in a romance novel; they’re the least stuck-up books in the world. Everybody knows that they are written and read just for kicks, and that gives the author an enviable freedom within which she may permit her imagination to run riot. And does it ever. These writers hve no authorial brakes at all, and their irrepressibility is enchanting all by itself. What other kind of author is free to name her hero Sin Watermount or Don Julio Valdares, Tarquin Roscuro or Duc Breul de Polain et Bouvais? There is generally a wild, far-flung and exotic locale: Queensland, the Western Cape of South Africa, the Scottish Highlands. There are impossible situations, natural disasters, a whole pantheon of dei ex machinis, drama galore. And there is, always, falling in love.

Although romance novels as a genera are easy to ignore, they are a deeply ingrained part of the culture.

It doesn’t matter whether you call this “serious” literature or not, really, though it seems to me that when millions and millions of people are involved in the same reading, it is very serious indeed.