MyAppleMenu | Tomorrow | Reader | Singapore
You are here in the archive: MyAppleMenu Reader > 2009 > August
Orhan Pamuk, New Yorker
The series of events and coincidences that would change my entire life began on April 27, 1975, when Sibel happened to spot a purse designed by the famous Jenny Colon in a shopwindow as we were walking along Valikonagi Avenue, enjoying the cool spring evening. Tweet
John Ashbery, New Yorker Tweet
Bruce Smith, New Yorker Tweet
Freeman Dyson, The New York Review Of Books
The scientists of that age were as Romantic as the poets. The scientific discoveries were as unexpected and intoxicating as the poems. Many of the poets were intensely interested in science, and many of the scientists in poetry. Tweet
Michael Pollan, Photograph by Christian Ziegler, National Geographic
How do you spread your genes around when you're stuck in one place? By tricking animals, including us, into falling in love. Tweet
Tom Scocca, Boston Globe
Or, why we’ll pay for information, but only if it’s completely irrelevant. Tweet
Jonathan Lethem, New York Times
If American fiction writers largely find themselves sorted tediously into the category of “natural” at either the short or the long form, regardless of the extent of their commitment to both, then Lorrie Moore — justly celebrated for her three story collections — has surely been counted as a miniaturist. This book should spell the end of that. Tweet
Ben Schwartz, The Atlantic
The easy path to fame and riches as an author. Just follow my formula. Tweet
Joel Achenbach, Washington Post
Younger people might not understand why such a fuss has been made over a man who ran for president 30 years ago. It is hard to explain the Kennedy mystique to anyone who never experienced the tumult of the 1960s. Tweet
Lev Grossman, Wall Street Journal
Where did this conspiracy come from in the first place—the plot against plot? I blame the Modernists. Who were, I grant you, the single greatest crop of writers the novel has ever seen. Tweet
Susan Straight, New York Times
That constant drive for data is all too typical in the age of No Child Left Behind, helping to replace a freely discovered love of language and story with a more rigid way of reading. Tweet
Regina Schrambling, Slate
You will never cook from it. Tweet
Darran Anderson, 3 AM
Brighton’s West Pier is burning down. A sex offender dressed as Satan is on the loose. Kylie Minogue’s gold hot-pants are insured for more than the Turin shroud. The end, my friends, is nigh. Tweet
Lance Fortnow, Communications Of The ACM
It's one of the fundamental mathematical problems of our time, and its importance grows with the rise of powerful computers. Tweet
Alan Bissett, Guardian
After Wetlands and Snuff, there are no boundaries left to push. Time to head in the opposite direction? Tweet
Elizabeth Gudrais, Harvard Magazine
Atul Gawande, “slightly bewildered” surgeon and health-policy scholar—and a literary voice of medicine. Tweet
Lance Larsen, Slate Tweet
David Sedaris, New Yorker
A day in the bush, a night at home. Tweet
Richard Wilbur, New Yorker Tweet
Richard Wilbur, New Yorker Tweet
Richard Wilbur, New Yorker Tweet
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, New Yorker
There once lived a girl who was killed, then brought back to life. That is, her parents were told that she was dead, but they weren’t allowed to keep her body. (The family had been riding the bus together; the girl was standing up front at the time of the explosion, and her parents were sitting behind her.) The girl was just fifteen, and she was thrown backward by the blast. Tweet
Porochista Khakpour, New York Times
In this second-chance viewing as a thirtysomething, I am amazed and inspired by all the everything-in-between, all the nothing-happening, all the ambivalence and the stagnation. Tweet
Nate Blakeslee, Texas Monthly
The graduates of a radical bilingual education program at Alicia R. Chacón International, in El Paso, would have no trouble reading either of these headlines. What can they teach the rest of us about the future of Texas? Tweet
Joseph Epstein, In Character
To be able to sit home and put words together in what one hopes are charming or otherwise striking sentences is, no matter how much tussle may be involved, lucky work, a privileged job. The only true grit connected with it ought to arrive when, thinking to complain about how hard it is to write, one is smart enough to shut up and silently grit one’s teeth. Tweet
Michael McFee, Slate Tweet
Sarah Boxer, Slate Magazine
When Fahrenheit 451 becomes a comic book, it's time to worry. Tweet
Anne Carson, New Yorker Tweet
Deborah Digges, New Yorker Tweet
Stephen Dunn, New Yorker Tweet
Danny Heitman, New York Times
It seems that we’ve done just about everything to get the American auto industry out of the doldrums. We’ve forced bankruptcies. We’ve exchanged cash for clunkers. But have we tried poetry? Tweet
Alastair Macaulay, New York Times
When people fall in love, they opt for an experience that others have had before. Very often that’s what they have in mind: they would like to share some of what happened to Romeo and Juliet, or Lizzy and Darcy or maybe just their parents. One of those archetypes of romance was born 75 years ago, with the release of “The Gay Divorcee,” starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Tweet
Gail Collins, New York Times
The lesson I took away from it is that whenever anybody asks you to do something off the wall, you should really try to do it — unless it involves being unethical or a two-plane connection. You might not enjoy it while it’s going on, but somewhere down the line the anecdotes will always come in handy. Tweet
Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
University Challenge shows British literacy is in critical condition. But Hugo Chávez has an idea that could help us. Tweet
Tom Vanderbilt, Salon
For the first time in ages, a country is switching to driving on the left. Should we all drive on the same side? Tweet
Scott Thill, Wired
So happy birthday, Iron Giant. Thanks for reminding us that heroism comes in many forms. And that it doesn’t come from a gun at all, but instead from a machine with its synthetic brain and heart fully charged. Tweet
Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times
NASA must provide the crew with some 20,000 meals -- light, with a shelf life of five years. Scientists are experimenting with packaging and preservation, but so far, mac and cheese is out. Tweet
Russ Parsons, Los Angeles Times
At a certain point in the wonderful new movie "Julie & Julia," there is a plot twist so shocking the audience gasps. Julia Child does something that seems so totally out of character that even on the way out, people were still shaking their heads. "How could she?" Well, that's one mystery I can solve. I was right there in the middle of it. Tweet
Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly
How a pair of undercover cops infiltrated the secret world of Houston dogfighting. Tweet
Louise Glück, Slate Magazine Tweet
David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times
The relentless cacophony that is life in the 21st century can make settling in with a book difficult even for lifelong readers and those who are paid to do it. Tweet
Carol Kaesuk Yoon, New York Times
Outside taxonomy, no one is much up in arms about this, but perhaps we should be, because the ordering and naming of life is no esoteric science. Tweet
Brad Stone, New York Times
Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.
That was so last century. Tweet
Michael Sokolove, New York Times
On a recent trip into Philadelphia, after I exited the Interstate and coasted to a stop at the first traffic light, a man walked up to my car. He wore a black apron with a change pouch and held aloft a copy of The Philadelphia Daily News, the city’s tart, irreverent tabloid. It gave me a warm feeling. Of course it did! I’m a newspaper guy. I worked as a reporter for The Daily News in the 1980s, and later for what we called “big sister,” the sober, broadsheet Philadelphia Inquirer. Even in better times, I would have been happy to see the product being hawked, but these days any small sign of life in the newspaper industry, even just the sight of someone reading a paper, feels positively uplifting. I handed over 75 cents for my Daily News, then drove on toward the center of the city — and U.S. Bankruptcy Court, where a hearing was soon to begin, part of an ongoing process that will determine the fate of the city’s newspapers. Tweet
Alison Byrne Fields, We'll Know When We Get There
Thank you, John Hughes. I love you for what you did to make me who I am. Tweet
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Some weeks ago I went so far as to suggest the gap between some critics and some moviegoers may be because the critics are more "evolved." Man, did the wrath hit the fan. I was clearly an elitist snob. But think about it. Wouldn't you expect a critic to be more highly evolved in taste than a fanboy zealot? Tweet
Jack Shafer, Slate Magazine
The Washington Post executive editor grovels before the paper's critics in the Mad Bitch controversy. Tweet
Catherine Saint Louis, New York Times
A midsummer's confession: when it comes to skin, I discriminate. I wish I treated my feet with the same tender loving care as I do my face. But I don’t. Not even close. Tweet
Judith Thurman, New Yorker
The mother and daughter behind the Little House stories. Tweet
by Tim Radford, Guardian
There, that's my thesis. Profound theme, good narrative style, great title and accidentally perfect timing, plus a bit of divine help and of course a lot of media attention. Those are the initial conditions for a bestseller, certainly, but nine million copies? That's the real puzzle. Anyone got a better idea? Tweet
by Tom Robbins, Village Voice
The many scams of Bloomberg's hip TV execs. Tweet
by Michael Idov, Slate
I turned my disastrous experience of opening a cafe into a novel. Tweet
by Robert Pinsky, Slate
Alexander Pope's "Epistle" and the art of making poetry from normal, banal, petty life. Tweet
by Michael Kimmelman, New York Times
Spending an idle morning watching people look at art is hardly a scientific experiment, but it rekindles a perennial question: What exactly are we looking for when we roam as tourists around museums? As with so many things right in front of us, the answer may be no less useful for being familiar. Tweet
by Sherman Alexie, New Yorker Tweet
by Sharon Olds, New Yorker Tweet
by Kay Ryan, New Yorker Tweet
by David Harsent, New Yorker Tweet
by Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker
Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism. Tweet
by Stephen White, New York Times
“You know about them, right?” She allowed me barely a second to reply before she added, “Come on.” She punctuated the plea with a hurried sigh, a little huff that I found more plaintive than insistent. “Don’t play opaque shrink with me, please. I don’t have ... time. Just tell me you know about them.” Tweet
by Cathy Alter, Washington Post
Dancing was once my raison d'être. So why had I stopped? Tweet
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.