Excerpts

Excerpt: Dimitry Morgachev: My Life

 

Here is an excerpt from Memoirs of Peasant Tolstoyans In Soviet Russia (Indiana University Press):

 

In our village of Burdino there were fistfights three times a year- in December and January, on Shrove Tuesday in February, and at Easter, in April. The village was divided in half, and on Shrove Tuesday village fought village–Burdino and Terbuny.  I also took part in those fights. Our priests said that fistfights were not bad: men got training from them and would be bolder and more active in war. The fights began with boys, then with teenagers, then grown men, and after that even bearded old men. Once the old men gathered close together like a wall and pushed me up against one of the strongest old men from the other side. I knocked him down, and from that time on they considered me a strong man. They said, “How he knocked over that big granddad!” It was the rule that you should never beat a man who was lying down, whether he was knocked down or whether he fell by himself, but sometimes they would agree to hold the very strongest men up by the armpits, and other strong men would not let them fall down and would keep beating them. Sometimes the outcome was fatal. Once a  wealthy shopkeeper offered two buckets of vodka  to the side that won. No fewer than three thousand men got together for the brawl. Our village won that time.

Excerpts / 14 Comments
December 18th, 2008 / 5:15 pm

Power Quote: Beckett

 

 

 

Thus the sixpence worth of sky changed again, from the poem that he alone of all the living could write to the poem that he alone of all the born could have written.

 

Murphy, p. 83

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December 18th, 2008 / 10:03 am

O Captain, My Captain: Lish Power Quote #2

 

 

 

Here is what I wanted. You know what I wanted? I wanted for me not to have to make believe I wanted something. 



Arcade, p. 156

Author Spotlight & Excerpts / 11 Comments
December 17th, 2008 / 12:09 pm

David Foster Wallace Quote

Culled from the current issue of Harper’s (January 2009), as recited by Zadie Smith at a memorial service for DFW at New York University):

“[…]there’s something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn’t have that much to do with talent, even glittering talent…Talent’s just an instrument. It’s like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn’t. I’m not saying I’m able to work consistently out of that premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of that part or yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.”

So I guess it’s me quoting Harper’s quoting Zadie Smith quoting David Foster Wallace, which is I think part of the magic of words and thoughts — that they course through so many minds, residing, then spreading again.

David Foster Wallace brings back feelings of J.D. Salinger’s alter-ego/character Buddy Glass — the philosopher at the bar, the one who tells you how it is outside the classroom. Much of how I try to act comes from his Kenyon Speech. It just moved me so much, the non-academic “real-life”ness of it all.

Writing as an act of love. If that sounds cheesey, we need more cheese.

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December 16th, 2008 / 4:36 pm

O Captain, My Captain: Lish Power Quote #1

 

 

 

 

It’s like listening to something nobody else is. Which is what it is when you’re supposed to be the author of it.


Arcade, p. 136


Author Spotlight & Excerpts / 11 Comments
December 16th, 2008 / 10:57 am