weekend links
Exiting Left: “The impact of the virus has thrown the sustaining rituals of politics into disarray and accelerated the
29
Aug
Pandemic Inventory
Seems like a lot of people are taking inventory of their pandemic experiences, so I will too. (As someone on Twitter
08
May
“Lying to yourself about who you are is no less evil than lying to a friend about something important.”
An intellectual does not become unproductive because of some mysterious ailment called “writer’s block.” An unproductive
23
Apr
“You were my best friend outside of Paris in 1918. You were wounded in the Ardennes and you died in my arms there. I’m glad you’re back in the world. You have a different face, a different name, but the soul shining out of your face is the same as my friend. Welcome back.”
The best ending to any writer’s interview ever? Paris Review asks Ray Bradbury about the origins of a character named
16
Apr
“A luxury cruiseliner quarantined in San Francisco bay, its well-heeled passengers confined to their cabins for weeks on end. Holidaymakers on lockdown at a quarantined hotel in Tenerife after an Italian doctor comes down with coronavirus. A world of isolated individuals rarely leaving their homes, keeping a wary distance from one another in public, communicating with their friends and loved ones via exclusively technological means. These situations are so Ballardian as to be in the realm of copyright infringement.”
“Twenty-first century life was already Ballardian. The rapid transition, under the new viral order, into further extremes of
02
Apr