(no subject)
It seems that every day I become less and less sure of what I want to do as a career. For a long time, journalism was an easy answer because I love writing and had never done any real journalism. Once I realized I was never going to be a reporter, design was the natural choice. And although I enjoy design, I think that if I could be anything, I would be a writer. In one way or another all of my career aspirations are related to it, so I think that it is high time I simply admit to myself that I would be very happy writing largely unsuccessful poetry and novels for the rest of my life.
I am a fifth of the way through Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost, a novel about the creation of the CIA. It has taught me more about writing that anything I have read in awhile. Here is an incomplete list of books I want to read (or reread) this year:
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Light in August by William Faulkner
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
On the Beach by Neville Shute
Ratner’s Star by Don DeLillo
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Stand by Stephen King
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Here are a few quotes I have recently enjoyed:
"We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
-Henry James
The "madness of art" bit treads the line of cliche but I think the rest is terrific.
"When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation."
-Truman Capote
I am a fifth of the way through Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost, a novel about the creation of the CIA. It has taught me more about writing that anything I have read in awhile. Here is an incomplete list of books I want to read (or reread) this year:
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Light in August by William Faulkner
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
On the Beach by Neville Shute
Ratner’s Star by Don DeLillo
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Stand by Stephen King
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Here are a few quotes I have recently enjoyed:
"We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
-Henry James
The "madness of art" bit treads the line of cliche but I think the rest is terrific.
"When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation."
-Truman Capote