Writing
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love CreateSpace (Okay, Okay, I’m Still Worried)
Readers, you have been extremely patient. I know not everyone is on board with the Kindle or other e-device. Curiously, I’ve heard from a lot of people who once had a Kindle and have stopped using it. One wonders what the future will bring. In the meantime, I’m trying to make my books available to… Continue reading
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What They Knew #27
“A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle…” – Vladimir Nabokov Continue reading
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Popova on Lightman
Just when I get beyond my fear of falling into a black hole, along comes Maria Popova to throw me back into a cosmic tailspin. In the title essay of his excellent The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew, which also gave us this beautiful meditation on science and spirituality, Alan Lightman points… Continue reading
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Fantastic Poem Breakdown: “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W.H. Auden
Taking a break from the Terrible Poem Breakdown series this week. Instead, we’re focused on Nina Martyris’s wonderful look at a classic poem by the great W.H. Auden. More than just a close read, Martyris’s essay provides what amounts to a biography of the poem in the hands of multiple poets: The poem was W.… Continue reading
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Blurbs That Will Not Be Appearing on My Book
Readers! Still trying to get the print version of The Race out there. It’s taking longer than I’d hoped. I do have one blurb lined up and a couple more in the hopper. I wish I had another one finalized to share with you (since Mondays are “Jacke News” day), but in the meantime, here… Continue reading
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Popova on Schopenhauer
The great Maria Popova takes a look at our favorite dismal crank Schopenhauer. (If you haven’t read Schopenhauer, start reading! Unless you’re one of those people who view cloudy days as a personal offense against your nature.) Popova’s article looks at Schopenhauer through a particular lens, asking whether he “presaged” today’s Internet writing on headline-and-slideshow… Continue reading
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Jacke’s Jacket: New Blurb
It’s a great day in Jacke news – a new blurb from the fabulous Ronica Dhar! Jacke Wilson’s work has for many years engaged me with its themes about the Midwest, politics, and contemporary culture. Alternately full of intrigue or expertly rendered deadpan comedy, Jacke’s stories (or perhaps satires? I’d have to ask Jacke to… Continue reading
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The Celebrated Yarn Spinner of Whatagenius County
Ben Tarnoff takes an insightful look at Mark Twain’s push to employ his humor for something deeper than mere entertainment. Mark Twain loved frontier humor, the impish wit and yeasty vernacular, its fondness for the gargantuan and the grotesque. He also understood its deeper value: not merely as entertainment but as a survival tactic. Twain… Continue reading
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Terrible Poem Breakdown: Another Apologia (of Sorts)
Some thoughts on the Terrible Poem Breakdown series, which continues to be one of our more popular sets of posts here on the blog. Even though I try to make it clear that the poets have expressly consented, it seems I risk being viewed as too negative. Readers, I get it: poets deserve our empathy,… Continue reading
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The Failure of the Unpublished Author: Dead or Dying?
We’re fans of failure on this blog (as we are in life). And of course, The Race: A Novella has a failed lawyer as one of its pole stars. Now Tim Parks brings things full circle with a look at failed writers, which of course we’re HUGE fans of as well, when we’re not self-hating them. (Oh boy… Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 