What a difference in writing...

He saw her running in the women’s race, her arms close to her sides. She was among the stragglers and stopped and walked off the field, laughing and wiping her face and throat with a handkerchief of the same material as her silk summer dress. Leventhal was standing near her brother. She came up to them and said, “Well, I used to be able to run when I was smaller.” That she was still not accustomed to thinking of herself as a woman, and a beautiful woman, made Leventhal feel very tender toward her. She was in his mind when he watched the contestants in the three-legged race hobbling over the meadow. He noticed one in particular, a man with red hair who struggled forward, angry with his partner, as though the race were a pain and a humiliation which he could wipe out only by winning. “What a difference,” Leventhal said to himself. “What a difference in people.”

---From Saul Bellow’s The Victim

Cited as an example of the way literature ought to read, from this wholesale teardown of the modern literary establishment, circa 2002. What is it now? 2009? Yeah, I keep up with the times.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers

Photoshop was created so this man could tell it like it is.

Roflpuke. Transparency! Today's publishers should try this. Maybe without such blatant honesty. Maybe more in the style of 18th Century subtitles. "In Whiche Our Heroine Has Dalliances with Numerous Sexy Were-Creatures and Captures a Vicious Paranormal Poltroon.” The books, they would fly off the shelves.

http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2008/10/20/mgk-versus-his-adolescent-reading-habits

Things that make you go, "HMMMMM," with, like, a furrowed brow and quizzical expression.

So today my roommate tells me that she’s all buzzed up like she’s on speed and it’s because she’s taking this new supplement called “resveratrol.” She asserts that she is NOT addicted. I laugh and tell her I know alls about resveratrol. It’s found in red wine and studies have show it increases longevity in mice, and also my dad has written a ton of articles about it. “Hah, what a coincidence!” she gushes, her teeth chattering and her eyes wide, before bouncing up the stairs to mainline some more resveratrol (street names: Easy R, Rez, buzza, Juicy Dust, Dusty Juice, facespackle, cosmic neckpunch*).

THEN! Like 3 minutos later, two different buddies send me a link to a humor piece in the New Yorker, just because it made them laugh and laugh and laugh. I click on the link… and the piece starts by quoting a paragraph from my dad’s article on resveratrol.

What the?

Coincidence? Or something…more sinister???

Anyway, all that is to say: life is a weird snake that likes to eat its own tail, but more importantly, it’s a funny piece!

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/01/26/090126sh_shouts_baumbach

*I made one of those up.**
**I made all of those up.