TapwaterJ I like this

McSweeneys Internet Tendency: A Populists Speech for the Patriotic Masses...

Oct 1, 10:36am  politics, writing  http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/10/1parro...

McSweeneys Internet Tendency: Dudes! Did You See the Library Theyve Got...

Sep 29, 10:15am    (1 review)  writing  http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/9/29yoder...

The Idiot President: Fiction: The New Yorker

Sep 29, 4:55am  writing, fiction  http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/feature...

Life and Letters: In the Ring: Reporting &Essays: The New Yorker

Sep 29, 4:50am  writing  http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/...

Three: Fiction: The New Yorker

Sep 24, 12:35pm  writing, fiction  http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/feature...

New Documentary Obscene Tells of Publishings Original Maverick, Barney...

Sep 22, 6:45am    (1 review)  movies, writing, society, publishing  http://nymag.com/movies/features/50500/

Original Maverick Crusading publisher Barney Rosset is Obscene in a good way. New York Magazine, Boris Katchka (Left) Rosset in 1958; (Top right) Rosset in 1967; (Bottom right) With first wife Joan Mitchell, ca. 1952. "Nobody pigeonholes Barney Rosset--longtime owner of Grove Press, anti-censorship crusader, countercultural icon. Not Screw founder Al Goldstein, who in a 1989 interview addressed him as "the worst, most fucked-up businessman in America." Not the CIA, whose voluminous case file calls him left-handed (which, he points out, is only partly accurate). Not the publisher friends who made the new bio-documentary Obscene (displeased with the movie at first, he's coming around). Not the National Book Foundation, whose Literarian Award this fall threatens to domesticate him. Rosset had the usual bad habits in the sixties, but publishing was his most debilitating compulsion. "A word has never been written or uttered which should not be published," he'd said, and like any decent addict, he was canny about feeding his habit. Winning a court battle to sell an uncensored version of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1959 (eight years after buying fledgling Grove) was only an opening gambit in Rosset's Great Game. "I didn't do that to save humanity," he says in Obscene. "I did it to save Tropic of Cancer." Henry Miller's novel was the next one he forced past the censors. William Burroughs and Malcolm X followed. (Less contentious were Pinter, Ionesco, and his good friend Samuel Beckett.) Then came Evergreen Review, a seminal radical magazine that combined stunning Pop Art, groundbreaking writing, and soft-core photography. The Che Guevara T-shirt image began as an Evergreen cover for a chapter from Che's diaries. Controversy boosted sales just enough to cover the lawyers' fees." Obscene -- The Documentary (Left) With Samuel Beckett in 1964; (Top right) With Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso; (Bottom right) With Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe (first published in the U.S. by Rosset) in 1997. ~ ~ ~

Micro Expressions | COSMOS magazine

Sep 18, 4:50am  writing, fiction  http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/2197/micro...

Cozy Up to the Camera and Smile | HASTAC

Sep 17, 2:43pm    (2 reviews)  fishing, philosophy, writing  http://www.hastac.org/node/1100

Fish Songs A Passion Lost A long personal reflection about life, the universe, and fishing. [Feel free to skip this post and go right to the dancing pygmy goats. I would.] TapwaterJ and a trophy Chinook -- on the Pere Marquette River Cathy Davidson and I got into a bit of a Facebook tease about fly fishing versus spin fishing and the memories of trophies we cherished. There was a time when fly fishing defined me. As I wrote in an essay for River Magazine 10 years ago, "The second thing I did when I got out of law school, was to get a really good fly rod and reel. The first thing was to get a washer and dryer. Even I know what is most important. I still have the rod and still fish it often. It is one of the few things in life that unfailingly makes me smile. All I need to do is take it out of its sleeve and put it together. Twenty years later I spent five times the cost of that rod for a new one that had the action and feel I was looking for. The same action and feel, it turns out, as the old one -- but not the history. A history of good days and bad, successes and failures, endlessly repeated mistakes, moments of perfection, and unexpected discoveries -- I guess like life itself." The essay's title was "Fish Songs" and it was about what I loved -- fishing. It was not about a love of catching fish. I am not sure I understood that distinction when I wrote it. Cathy's post is beautifully written and echoes the turning moment that many have had while pursuing the outdoor life -- the moment we walk away from it. For me, it was walking away from a lifetime obsession with fly fishing and a part-time passion as a fly fishing guide. Cathy recalls her moment with palpable compassion: "Then, one morning, I had some serious f2f experience with a dying fish who lay passively in the bottom of my canoe. I swear he looked at me with empathy as I sweated over removing a so-called barbless hook that was caught too deep within his gullet: we both knew he was going to die. I finally unhooked him and released him into the water. I can still see the slimy sliver of fish blood trailing behind as he slowly swam away from me. I canoed back to shore, put away my poles, and have never fished again." For me, it was a quail I shot. After he landed next to me, I watched him deflate -- as if in slow motion -- his head nodding forward onto his chest and then stillness as the final wisp of life escaped. It haunts me still. Look, I am no vegan. I once wrote that one of the reasons I fished and hunted was to take responsibility for killing my own food, rather than having someone else always do it for me, wrap it in plastic, and put it on a shelf. And I meant it. But, it just doesn't feel right anymore. Part of me deflated with that quail. Pere Marquette Fly Fishing "Cozy up to the camera and smile." - Cathy Davidson ~ ~ ~

3quarksdaily

Sep 14, 6:34am  writing  http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdai...

McSweeneys Internet Tendency: Theres a Plumbing Problem in the Hamptons...

Sep 8, 2:34pm  writing  http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/9/5weaver...