Writers Being Awesome

I’m shocked by anyone who doesn’t consider Los Angeles to be anything less than a bozo-saturated hellhole. It is pretty much without question the worst city in America. The reason “Walking in L.A.” by Missing Persons was the most accidentally prescient single of 1982 was because of its unfathomable (but wholly accurate) specificity: Los Angeles is the only city in the world where the process of walking on the sidewalk could somehow be a) political and b) humiliating. It is the only community I’ve ever visited where absolutely everything cliche proved to be completely accurate.

—Chuck Klosterman

(Source: cellarghosts)

incandenza:

capitalnewyork:peterwknox)

A riff on DFW

(Source: alexbalk)

Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction…. It requires us to pace ourselves. It returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise.

—David Ulin (via og-blay)

(via prettybooks)

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

—Oscar Wilde (via shinyandrea)

(via starkreactor)

I love writing, but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says ‘You may have fooled some of the people some of the time, but those days are over, giftless. I’m not your agent and I’m not your mommy, I’m a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?’ And I really, really don’t. I don’t want any trouble. I’ll go peaceable-like.

—Aaron Sorkin (via lprecords)

(Source: tobyziegler, via lprecords)

But the whole dark genius of corporations is that they allow for individual reward without individual obligation. The workers’ obligations are to the executives, and the executives’ obligations are to the CEO, and the CEO’s obligation is to the Board of Directors, and the Board’s obligation is to the stockholders, who are also the same customers the corporation will screw over at the very earliest opportunity in the name of profit, which profits are distributed as dividends to the very stockholder-slash-customers they’ve been fucking over in their own name. It’s like a fugue of evaded responsibility.

[…]

Corporations aren’t citizens or neighbors or parents. They can’t vote or serve in combat. They don’t learn the Pledge of Allegiance. They don’t have souls. They’re revenue machines. I don’t have any problem with that. I think it’s absurd to lay moral or civic obligations on them. Their only obligations are strategic, and while they can get very complex, at root they’re not civic entities. With corporations, I have no problem with government enforcement of statutes and regulatory policy serving a conscience function. What my problem is the way it seems that we as individual citizens have adopted a corporate attitude. That our ultimate obligation is to ourselves. That unless it’s illegal or there are direct practical consequences for ourselves, any activity is OK.

—David Foster Wallace, The Pale King [2011] (via idiotlanguage)

(Source: referent, via dfwforever)

The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?” And he’ll look stunned and say, “How did you know?” He doesn’t realize something’s always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn’t know everybody’s always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they’re exerting great willpower and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing’s ever wrong, from seeing it. This is the way of people. Suddenly ask what’s wrong and whether they open up and spill their guts or deny it and pretend you’re off, they’ll think you’re perceptive and understanding. They’ll either be grateful, or they’ll be frightened and avoid you from then on. Both reactions have their uses, as we’ll get to. You can play it either way. This works over 90 percent of the time.

—

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

I laughed out loud reading this passage the first time, then was deeply saddened reading it over a second and third time. Which is exactly why I love David Foster Wallace’s writing. It’s both (funny and sad) - as is life - all at once.

(via sometimesagreatnotion)

(via murmurandshout)

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

—Umberto Eco (via ebookporn)