...the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.
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...the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.
Here there be monsters 🦖 Hard to say who's more excited to start the last book on our Literature of Science and Technology syllabus, me or my students.
The luck that had turned in Ethwen now turned the world with it under my hand. I never had a gift but one, to know when the great wheel gives to a touch, to know and act. I had thought that foresight lost, last year in Erhenrang, and never to be regained. A great delight it was to feel that certainty again, to know that I could steer my fortune and the world's chance like a bobsled down the steep, dangerous hour.
It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.
Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number--Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have a beer with Dionysios, every now and then. I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand; but perhaps men were barbarians, beside the creatures who had made this thing.
I didn't actually sign up to teach this literature of science and technology class, but it's turning out to be a very happy accident 🌌
Deliberate error was unthinkable. Even the concealment of truth filled him with a sense of imperfection, of wrongness--of what, in a human being, would have been called guilt. For like his makers, Hal had been created innocent; but, all too soon, a snake had entered his electronic Eden.
Well, it's October. Let's get weird.
More monsters, more mayhem 🐾🌊🧬 Lesson planning for next week.
Starting the semester with some good old-fashioned body-building 💀
Chipping away at that dissertation prospectus today 🖊️
Next up in research reading: some new(ish) nonfiction exploring the complicated past and unpredictable future of psychedelics 🍄
I know I've been gone for a long time--there were some issues with my account and then my phone broke--but I'm excited to be back and to share the incredible cover art for the Spanish edition of IF WE WERE VILLAINS, coming next year! More on Twitter and IG: https://twitter.com/SureAsMel/status/1154417687050838017?s=19 https://www.instagram.com/p/B0WFoZaAnQF/?igshid=ch6egm90xb85
IG has reminded me that this time in 2016 I was drunk in a castle in Denmark and I still forget that happened so here‘s a fun flashback from LitHub! https://lithub.com/the-time-i-spent-the-night-in-hamlets-castle/ #shakespeare
Today‘s the last day of the #Shakespeare Association of America‘s 2019 conference! (To my credit I managed to control myself at the book exhibits.)
As author and former bookseller and DPI alum, I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of books and publishing. If you care about those things, this is an important (and succinct) thread to read: https://twitter.com/ravenbookstore/status/1118596015957975041?s=21
Sorry I‘ve been gone from Litsy for ages! I got locked out of my account and it took a while to rectify. Anyway, here‘s what I‘m currently reading between studying for my comprehensive exams and work on my current writing project.
Language is the first and last structure of madness.
Wisdom, like other precious substances, must be torn from the bowels of the earth. (Jérôme Cardan)
The phenomenon is modern, but rock‘s soul was burnished in the fires of ancient mystery cults, when myth and initiation were fused in a potent mix of dance, intoxication, and other forms of ecstatic revelry. But despite the spectacle of this kind of worship, it‘s still a simple human need being played out in theatrical ways: it‘s the desire for community, for myth and ritual, and for direct communication with the divine.
Words do not express thoughts very well; everything immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.
Some snow-day ramblings on writer cabin fever. https://mlrio.com/2019/01/13/tyranny-of-the-mind/ #writing
The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity‘s most powerful and senseless desire–the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important?
panThis book is only 122 pages but I struggled to get through it. Instead of a traditional memoir or even a close look at the phenomenon of insomnia, it‘s more like a pseudophilosophical chapbook of random literary namedroppimg (Nabokov, Wordsworth, and Gilgamesh, all in three pages! Can you tell she‘s educated?) It almost seems to mimic the scattered thoughts of the insomniac; clever; maybe, but not compelling. ⭐️⭐️
The news that night, that month, that year, was not good, but the color images were perfect. You could see someone get shot, as if it were happening in your living room, as you looked up from your TV dinner. For the first time in history, America was watching a war as it was fought, in near real time.
Yes, finally, war is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man you don‘t even know well enough to hate… therefore, to know war is to know there is still madness in the world. (Lyndon Johnson)
One of the greatest debut albums ever, released OTD in 1967. I‘ve picked up about five copies of this record—from first pressings to reissues—but how could you have too many? Besides being the leather-clad Lizard King who fronted the Doors, Jim Morrison was also a compelling poet, and his verse is worth exploring if you‘ve ever been intrigued by his luscious twisted lyrics. #music #records #vinyl #thedoors
My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.
pickA little redundant in places for anybody who already has a foot in the industry, but a great resource for anyone who‘s truly new to publishing and writing as a job. Friedman does vital work debunking stubborn myths about creative careers and telling unpleasant truths about the way the business works. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Hello Litsy! Sorry I have been AWOL forever, but this semester was a rough one. Anyway, what better morning to get back on the bandwagon? New year‘s resolutions are stupid, but I need to fix my life so here are some thoughts on writing, work, and quality of life for #2019 (and some explanations for why I‘ve been gone so long): https://mlrio.com/2019/01/01/time-is-a-construct-but-new-beginnings-are-nice/
Now King Lear comes to mind. If I had to sum up the chief sensation I get from the play it‘s of the fragility of human life, the smell of mortality. Well, here I am, back at home in South Africa, right up against it, the reality of that fragility, that mortality. And, surprisingly, it‘s not only frightening and awful. It also has, like this image of Verne sitting in the window above me–and like the play–a strange beauty.
If you‘re in the MD/DC area, come see me and get a book signed! (Signed books make great Christmas gifts.) Details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/230217414543403/
The pessimistic mood of the late 1960s was partly produced by the optimism that had pervaded the early years of the decade and radical Americans who turned against their own country often denounced it with particular bitterness because they felt it had failed to live up to its elevated destiny.
Happy Turkey Day, readers. Thankful for you and everybody who made this weird book possible 🦃
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