we were just pretending

I have known writers at this dangerous and tricky age to phone their homes from their offices, or their offices from their homes, asking for themselves in a low tone, and then, having fortunately discovered that they were “out,” to collapse in hard-breathing relief. This is particularly true of writers of light pieces running from a thousand to two thousand words.

The notion that such persons are gay of heart and carefree are curiously untrue. They lead, as a matter of fact, an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats. Afraid of losing themselves in the larger flight of the two-volume novel, or even the one-volume novel, they stick to short accounts of their misadventures because they never get so deep into them but that they feel they can get out. This type of writing is not a joyous form of self-expression but the manifestation of a twitchiness at once cosmic and mundane. Authors of such pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbors, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old friends. To call such persons “humorists,” a loose-fitting and ugly word, is to miss the nature of their dilemma and the dilemma of their nature. The little wheels of their invention are set in motion by the damp hands of melancholy.

— James Thurber (from “Preface to a Life”)

And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight — isn’t that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you’re less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn’t it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you’ve experienced before? You see things more clearly and you know that you’re seeing them more clearly. And it comes to you that this is what it means to love life, this is all anybody who talks seriously about God is ever talking about. Moments like this.

— Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

(Source: myriadsubtletiess)

For me, it’s basic Critic 101. Judge the thing you’re looking at, not by outside criteria. There are not enough giraffes on Girls, there are not enough hula hoops on Girls, because it’s a story about these four girls, not about giraffes or hula hoops.

—

Jacob Clifton

(I haven’t actually seen Girls yet, but this is def my first rule of arts criticism, more concisely worded than I usually put it in my own rants.)

Life is something that happens when you can’t get to sleep.

— Fran Lebowitz

The main thing the traveler carries about with her is herself. There’s my home, and then the world: the sea is much stronger than the anchor. I’ve acted wherever I’ve alighted like a guest for life, or, when at my best, as in that line from Purgatorio: We are pilgrims, as you are.

—

Jim Shepard, “The Track of the Assassins” (from You Think That’s Bad)

Saw Shepard read at Joe’s Pub last night. Last time was 3 years ago at Brookline Booksmith. He’s still my favorite short story writer.

To give a damn is a personal calling, not a job description.

— James Victore