Posts tagged lit
citizen kerry
Someday i'm going to understand America. Until then, I have this blog.
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Spring in Washington Square!
I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop thinking about Patti Smith every time I walk through this place. Thanks a lot, Just Kids!
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is blogging art?
I’ve been so defensive of blogging recently. (What a sad sentence.) I’m noticing small disses everywhere: in the movie Contagion, the hero claims that “blogs are graffiti with punctuation.” Also, Jude Law plays a nutcase blogger who is obsessed with conspiracy theories. (Of course he is! Bloggers are wacky!) The New Yorker had a cartoon in its Fashion Week issue poking fun at blogs. And in my own life, when I recently showed someone a post I’d written, his tone was sad: “Oh, you blog.”
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dating, seen through the 7 literary conflicts
Recently, a Reader Who Shall Remain Anonymous asked me about dating in New York City. I’m always psyched to know that someone wants to hear what I have to say, about anything, so I thought I’d give it a go.
I try to avoid writing about this topic because there was a time in my life, not too long ago, when I was all drama, and I’m glad to be out of it. I’d like to say I looked inside, dug deep, and grew, but in reality I started seeing someone who is very grounded.
All to say: I think I can write about this once without regressing.
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It felt good and even revitalizing to be living in America, a country which, for all its flaws, was still interesting to both of us: a fast-moving, multi-cultural, ever-evoloving, maddeningly contradictory, creatively challenging, and fundamentally alive sort of place.
—Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Some thoughts:
1. I love patriotism in unlikely places!
2. Last month, I finally read Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert’s follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love because my dear friend Joanna gave it to me at her bridal shower.
3. Joey always gives me great books, particularly about divorce. She likes the “divorce-memoir-genre,” as she calls it. Now I do, too. (Examples include: Happens Every Day and This is Not the Story You Think It Is.) There is no exciting personal story as to why, since neither of us have even been married. I think it’s the combination of high stakes + love + conflict = good story that feels like you are catching up with your best friend in real life over margaritas.
4. In hindsight, I agree that giving my sister a memoir about how one woman’s marriage crumpled was not the best choice of honeymoon reading. (But if you are not getting hitched this weekend, Happens Every Day is a page-turner!)
5. As I mentioned yesterday, lots of people hate Elizabeth Gilbert in passionate, emotional ways, and they are often the same people who finished her book in two days.
6. When I see women on the subway reading Eat, Pray, Love in 2011, I think “Good for you, Outlier!”
7. The way I justify writing this post in June, 2011 is that I just read Committed.
