My write-up of favorite books of 2008, topped off by Zachary Lazar’s extraordinary Sway, is up over at Newsday. The longer and more pressing list, though, is the one with the books I haven’t gotten to:
Farewell Navigator by Leni Zumas
2666 by Roberto Bolano, translation by Natasha Wimmer
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies [...]
From the New York Times obituary:
The stage direction “pause” would haunt him throughout his career.
Intended as an instructive note to actors, the Pinter pause was a space for emphasis and breathing room. But it could also be as threatening as a raised fist. Mr. Pinter said that writing the word “pause” into his first play [...]
Dock Ellis, who famously pitched a no-hitter while on acid, passed away yesterday.
“Former major league pitcher Dock Ellis dies at 63,” Los Angeles Times
Some scattered thoughts after finishing, or rather, tearing through Susan Sontag’s Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963. Like others, I was transfixed.
There’s something about how Sontag thinks of the mind that I found kind of haunting: “I must not do all those things so that I will not know these horrible moments when my [...]