MEMBER BLOG TAG: love
| Friday, May 6, 2011 5:25PM | | | | Bloomerang | Tags: Harold Bloom, Kafka, letters, falling in love with literature
| | | "Let's get to the business at hand. I'm old, and I may collapse at any minute!" So says the critic Harold Bloom, settling into his chair with a portmanteau majesty. The very last event of the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival begins. I feel as if I've gotten lost on the set of a Woody Allen movie.
Maybe that's because the people seated with me in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the New York Public Library are well wedded to the word--and to their very own words. Also, everyone here appears to be a person of some importance to themselves. Except for me. Silent and self-skeptical, I am busy writing a letter. My letter is addressed to--but wait a little. We'll see . . . .
... | | | | | | | Sunday, May 1, 2011 8:40PM | | | | A CONVERSATION WITH HAROLD BLOOM | Tags: Literary taste, Western literary canon, literary criticism, Shakespeare's greatness: naturalistic characterizations. Walt Whitman's finest works, Ralph Waldo Emerson as American mentor, Edmund Wilson as inspiration, Dr. Samuel Johnson as role model for Harold Bloom, love of reading.
| | | | Yale University’s Sterling Professor of Humanities, author of many books of literary criticism and cultural analysis, Harold Bloom, was introduced and questioned by Paul Holdengraber to stimulate a conversation about Mr. Bloom's opinions and career. Holdengraber is curator of “LIVE from the NYPL, a Cognitive Theatre with a mission to provoke, engage, instigate, and agitate the mind.” The acoustics in the auditorium were poor, causing an echo-like reverberation that made it difficult to understand what the men were saying. Holdengraber's German accent and Harold Bloom's age and difficult speech, and habit of mumbling behind the hand supporting his chin, made it hard to understand their conversation. Most audience members, except for those in the very front rows near the stage, had difficulty getting all the... | | | | | | | Saturday, May 1, 2010 9:18AM | | | | Love Is Being Horny in a Tie | Tags: robert coover, quim monzo, masturbatory images, samuel beckett, humor in literature, love, happiness, god
| | | A number of years ago, when I was working for a different publishing house, Robert Coover suggested I take a look at the work of Catalan author Quim Monzo. I had someone do a reader's report on 100 Stories, but the project sort of fizzled out despite the fact that the samples translated into English were brilliant and hilarious. Fast forward a few years, I'm now at Open Letter, have been to Barcelona (where I fell in love with the city and its culture, and where the people are always smiling and happy), met Quim Monzo, and signed on a bunch of his books, including the novel Gasoline, which we published a few weeks ago.
So I was naturally excited that the first... | | | | | | | Thursday, April 30, 2009 10:09AM | | | | Hey, Reading Should Actually Be Fun | Tags: Children's Books to Create a Lifeloving Love of Reading, Mary Ann Hoberman, Francine Prose, Vera B. Williams, Meir Shalev
| | | Using Children's Books to Create a Lifeloving Love of Reading was a great event. Why it attracted the oldest crowd in the history of World Voices, I have no idea, but maybe it's because we're all stuck in our youth. We can't get out but we can't go back either, so we have to turn to literature to save ourselves from the horror of being adults.
"I still live in my pre-school years," Mary Ann Hoberman said.
"I have total recall of my childhood." Vera B. Williams agreed. "But what I'm most concerned with is how we connect our stories with love ... how we make the words get up and dance."
The words did get up and dance this afternoon. Meir... | | | | | | | Sunday, April 19, 2009 10:42AM | | | | Learning the Love of Learning | Tags: Higher Education, Love of Learning, Cardinal Newman
| | | For Socrates in the dialogues of Plato, learning had been a perpetual ecstasy. He scorned the Sophists, who wanted to place philosophy in the service of jurisprudence rather than truth and who charged money for their services. Socrates could charge his students nothing, for he desired almost nothing beyond the opportunity to question the learned and powerful. Christians may strive to imitate Jesus, but they would not want to be crucified. Scholars, similarly, may want to be like Socrates, but they would not like to live in poverty.
Anybody who hangs around an institution of higher education for a while will hear it said that "learning should be for its own sake." That may sound bizarre, old-fashioned, and even crazy, yet it is also... | | | | | | | Sunday, May 11, 2008 3:09PM | | | | After the Rain (poem) | Tags: Dragonflies, Love
| | | AFTER THE RAIN
Suddenly, the flicker
Of iridescent wings --
Two dragonflies in an embrace,
Now a single creature,
Rising, circling, hovering,
Above a pond.
This is the culmination of their lives,
Which soon will end, but is the nuptial,
So synchronized and so precise,
Too perfect to be love?
| | | | | | | Wednesday, April 23, 2008 4:59PM | | | | some things hurt more, much more... | Tags: love, cultural mores, decisions,
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I was just listening to the song “Cars n’ Girls” by a group called Prefab Sprout (if you don't know them, they are worth looking up and are an Irish band and well worth the time). The song is their response to Bruce Springsteen and before I can say anything, that is, if it remains that I have anything to say, let me quote from some of the song for you here and remember, the song is intended for Bruce Springsteen, whom I also happen to like, but Paddy-boy’s point is well-taken here (*note that Paddy is the lead-singer for the group);
Brucie dreams life's a highway too many roads bypass my way
Or... | | | | | |
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