This week’s New Yorker contains two fascinating articles. The first, by Jeffrey Goldberg, which, unfortuntely, isn’t posted on the magazine’s site, describes the increase in fundamental Islamic terrorist activity in the “Triple Frontier”–the border area shared by Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. The second article, Jerome Groopman’s “Dying Words,” is a sad, revealing look at various methods doctors use to break the worst kind of news to their patients.
BBC News: “Plans are afoot to try and emulate the travels of a Chinese eunuch who is believed to have discovered America more than 70 years before Christopher Columbus.”
The other day, I started reading Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms.” I was in the mood for some muscular prose and some violence. I made it all of 20 pages before putting the book down in disappointment. Most recently, I read Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not” when I was in college, and I liked it. I didn’t remember, though, that Hemingway’s prose is so spare–it’s naked to the point of being, for me, ugly. His writing is devoid of lyricism; his words and sentences and thoughts are pieced together so haphazardly that I found it unbearable. Granted, I didn’t give it much time, but “A Farewell to Arms” seems like a hurriedly-written, adolescent jumble of fragmented words strung together without care for the way they might be encountered by the reader. I’m struggling, now, to understand why Hemingway’s so revered, although this short piece helps put his writing in the context of American literature, and explains just why it’s so timeless.
So, my with my delicate aesthetic sense craving something refined, I picked up a novella by one of my all-time favorite writers, Truman Capote: “The Grass Harp.” Wow. I can’t believe I’ve never read it. I’m not even halfway through it, but so far, it’s the perfect antidote to Hemingway’s clunky prose–it’s clever, funny, and, most of all, beautifully written. Listen to the way the narrator, Collin Fenwick, describes, on the very first page, a field near his small Southern town’s graveyard (and gives rise to the title of the book):
Below the hill grows a field of high Indian grass that changes color with the season: go see it in the fall, late September, when it has gone red as sunset, when scarlet shadows like firelight breeze over it and the autumn winds strum on its dry leaves sighing human music, a harp of voices.
Now that’s good writing.
“The Scales of Good and Evil”–one man’s list of the best and worst people of all time.
I attended a book signing by Dave Eggers yesterday. He autographed my copy of his new novel, “You Shall Know Our Velocity”–and, under my name, drew a picture of a small boat with the word “indeed” on it. He seemed like a nice guy.
O.J. Simpson says: “For years, I’ve been pretty sure that I did not murder my wife.”
If you enjoy Apple’s “Switch” campaign (which urges unhappy PC users to try Macs), you may also like the Japanese version of their ads. No clue what they’re saying, but the spots are funny.
Marissa Mayer, a Product Manager at Google, talks about how they keep the site so simple and user-friendly. (And on a side note, Mark Hurst, who runs GoodExperience.com, offers this intriguing photo of a Beijing cityscape. I like the juxtaposition of the modern buildings, the McDonald’s sign, the pagoda, and, on the building in the foreground, the Chinese flag.)
I saw the incredibly good WILCO at the 9:30 Club last night. And then I had a chili cheeseburger at Ben’s Chili Bowl. I am a happy man.
