Archives for July 3, 2012

I’m still on ice at the MacDowell Colony, writing furiously and happily, but I’ve just made two guest appearances in cyberspace:
• Today I contributed to Beach Reads for Smart People, a summer-reading list posted by my friend Hannah Miet on The Atlantic Wire. Among those present: Stephen Elliott, Sasha Frere-Jones, Emily Gould, Frederick Kaufman, and Marcy Dermansky. I don’t feel remotely cool enough to keep such company–it’s as though I crashed the wrong party.
• Jon Winokur quizzed me a few days ago for his AdviceToWriters site. You might find my answers interesting, or not.
Now, back to work!

From 2005:

As for Arlington National Cemetery, my brother and I spent a whole morning there, and could easily have spent a whole day if we’d had more time to spare. It’s no place for the flippant–Arlington has a way of making the overheard remarks of ironically inclined visitors sound shameful–but it has much to offer the aesthete, even the soul-deadened kind to whom patriotism is no more than gold-braided bigotry….

Read the whole thing here.

“Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture–and ourselves.”

Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture