Is this copyright infringement? I don’t know. But what I’m about to share with you is an amazingly rendered and extremely short short story by David Foster Wallace. (Sorry. Hope those adverbs don’t make you think you’re about to read a title by Jonathan Safran Foer.) Begin quote— A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life [...]
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Oprah, my favorite talk-show prophet, has called it the most important room in the house. The master bedroom, she insists, needs to be an oasis more than just a place to sleep. And it should never have a TV. Any rap star on MTV’s Cribs presents his bedroom like its Downton Abbey. He opens [...]
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I have this issue with thinking everything that happens has some bigger meaning. For the past few days, I’ve been fretting about my iPhone. You’d think the thing was a family member or something. I was at a museum with my kids, and when I went to the bathroom, my phone slipped out of my [...]
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As a teacher, I try to find poetry and prose that will really resonate with students. It’s a skill not unlike writing, in which you have to know your audience, use cultural references to persuade them and connect with them. I often turn to the poet Anne Sexton to help me do this, since her [...]
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I know you’re all waiting with baited breath about the next Maladjusted Book Club selection, especially because this October, the Maladjusted Book Club turns O-N-E. No, you weren’t? You were busy? You were excited to pick your own books to read? Too bad. This next one is making me gush, it’s so delicious. Somewhere in [...]
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People don’t read poetry. Maybe they stopped when TV was invented. And yet, like poet Wislawa Szymborska, I “clutch on to it, / as to a saving bannister.” When I hear a great poem, a poem that takes my breath away, I am filled with so many emotions. Calm, for the moment I stopped and [...]
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In Gary Shteyngart’s humorous, futuristic novel, Super Sad True Love Story, the characters are horrified by the smell of real books. They do all their reading—but mostly, shopping—on the small devices strung around their necks. And in the City Room Blog of the New York Times yesterday, Lisa Lewis begged, “Ladies and Gentlemen, take out your [...]
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My Maladjusted Readers, I am sorry. I’ve been quite remiss in picking our next book. It’s summer, you see, and I have such a stack of books I want to read. As Commodus from Gladiator says, “All my desires are splitting my head to pieces.” He also says, “It vexes me. I’m terribly vexed.” Commodus [...]
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Let’s be honest. Good writing is, as Anne Lamott says, about “telling the truth,” and so I am going to say what I’ve been afraid to say for years, and what I especially have not said on this blog. Like many mom-bloggers, I want to be a writer. A published one. Except I’m afraid I won’t [...]
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