I know how it sounds to suggest my boyfriend dumped me because he’s scared I’ll become like Nora Ephron. You’re thinking: that’s what you’re going with? Or maybe: what’s her name?
Banning wrote, "Only 2 people came to my author signing yesterday, so I was pretty bummed about it. Especially as 37 people responded 'going' to the event. Kind of upset, honestly, and a little embarrassed."
But that night, instead of taking down what she wrote, she stared at her tweet in shock as a mass of authors, including some of the most renowned novelists in the world, replied with their own experiences of low turnout.
I call myself a spiritual materialist. As a scientist, I’m a materialist. Not in the sense of seeking happiness in cars and nice clothes, but in the literal sense of the word: the belief that everything is made out of atoms and molecules, and nothing more. Further, I believe that the material stuff of the universe is governed by a small number of fundamental laws. Yet I have had transcendent experiences. I’ve made eye contact with wild animals. Looking up at the stars one summer night, I lost track of my body and felt that I was merging with things far larger than myself. I feel connected to other people and to the world of living things. I appreciate beauty. I’ve experienced awe. Of course, all of us have had similar feelings and moments, like the birth of a child or watching a solar eclipse. Although these experiences vary widely, they have sufficient similarity that I’ll gather them together under the heading of “spirituality.” So I’m a spiritual materialist.
Many people associate spirituality with an all-powerful, intentional, and supernatural God. I respect such beliefs. But my concept of spirituality does not require them. It is my view that all human experiences, including spirituality, are compatible with a fully scientific view of the world, even while some are not reducible to zeros and ones. I believe not only that these experiences are rooted in material atoms and molecules but also that they can be explained in terms of the forces of Darwinian evolution.
Despite the foreboding topic of environmental disaster, the novel rewards readers with peace and solace after persevering through a series of tragedies that feel too close to home. “The Light Pirate” is a symphony of beauty and heartbreak, survival and loneliness. Combined, it’s a haunting melody of nature.
Exuberant, cinematic, immersive, elegant and witty — with a dash of darkness — it is, as someone says of one of its characters, “quite the little bon-bon.”
Looking back at the decades Hollywood studios operated with a self-regulating production code, famed director Billy Wilder said that “[t]here are times when I wish we still had it because the fun has gone out of it, the game that you played with them.” The Oscar-winning filmmaker continued, “We had to be clever. In order to say, ‘You son of a bitch,’ you had to say, ‘If you had a mother, she’d bark.’” Fans of Old Hollywood know exactly what Wilder was getting at. In a famous scene in one of his best films, Double Indemnity (1944), an insurance salesman is aggressively flirting with a married woman, to which she replies, “There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff.” Those who lived and breathed this rich and complex history, and who survived to tell the tale, are featured in a new, nearly 800-page volume, Hollywood: The Oral History, edited by Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson, essential chroniclers of Tinseltown lore.
Pound on the window when you see sun,
pet a dog who is lying in the rays, do not