Category: On writing
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A bit vague, not lost
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Anniversary of this blog… sixteen years. A few days ago, really, on Saturday, but this is close enough. No, the blog doesn't feel dead to me, I'm still here for it, and it for me. I retired from the university in February; moved the books of my office to storage; and now keep talking about…
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[Essaying] Bloggisization
Brian Dillon, Essayism. He writes beautifully, and has become famous by doing it. Actually I'd never heard of him until I started noticing those Fitzcarraldo Editions – are they named for somebody involved, or for Herzog's strange movie, and the man the movie is about, played by the mad Kinski? – it's probably about the…
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Familiar
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in Academia, AIDS/HIV, Death, Illness, Imagined, Memory, Music, On writing, Personal, Psychology, TelevisionThe image seems clear, even obvious, to me – it could be from one of the better-written fantasies, or from a film about some medieval saga… an old man living alone in the woods; there is a shift in the wind, or the light – he looks up, creases his forehead slightly, sniffs the air…
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Writing a Story for You
[A 1991 story written in Terry Wolverton's writing group; about Reid Beitrusten, who died 2 December 1983.] You’re dead, but you wanted to write stories. You were just about to get published, just about to start making it. So I’m writing a story for you, I started it in the laundromat, I went next door…
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Comfortable on the precipice
I think: there's a smell of doom, and power, in the room… ••• I am working on my thesis for the Jung-Institut, which is on the verge of being late, or too late; is methodologically not yet solid; is built from fragments of the familiar and the new; is put together rather quickly. And yet,…
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14:23 10-3-18
14:23 = 2:23 pm 10 March 2018 = Saturday … Having left M. with a hug at the station (one of those hugs between men that always make me wonder, in a flash, whether non-gay locals find this unusual, but then I always decide not to care), I turn and walk – not, as I…
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Wandering the stacks
So: I am finally going through all the books, and then the papers, in my office. My office is being moved soon – rather sooner than I'd expected: repeated insistence on a clear date on my part gave rise to a flurry of emails assuring me that it wouldn't happen until mid-September; but now of…
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Addressed to the passions
(If you don't know that phrase, it is from one of the funniest and most touching of essays by Max Beerbohm, 'A Clergyman.' I suggest you find it and read it.) An intense week… after another intense week, but this one was very different…. Well, for four days, at least: verve, intensity, demands on time…
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The hard part
I've become increasingly aware, in a somewhat embarrassed way, of the difference between psychologically recovering from irrational complexes that hamper us, that keep us from living – and actually, actively, doing things in the world, doing things in life. I mean, okay, I've always kind of stunk at this. My sister and brother will easily…
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For Jarman
In April 2010, I gave a presentation about Derek Jarman, where I worked through The Garden, Edward II, and Blue, showing the closeness to death in each film. Or maybe: not just showing. When I polished the presentation to give in New Orleans, I felt close to something…. I promised, last year, to turn the…
Paul Attinello 