Ramblings & ephemera
From Claudia Roth Pierpont’s “The Florentine” (The New Yorker: 15 September 2008): 92:
… the rules by which conspirators must proceed: confide in absolutely no one except when absolutely necessary, try to leave no one alive who might be able to take revenge, and, above all, never put anything in writing.
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Posted on September 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, history, language & literature, security | No Comments »
From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I was reminded of a blind woman, a contemporary of Mozart and a most remarkable pianist, who, it is said, could no longer play after she regained some sight.
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Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, security, weird | No Comments »
From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I recently received a letter from Howard Engel, a Canadian novelist, who told me that he had a somewhat similar problem following a stroke: “The area affected,” he relates, “was my ability to read. I can write, but I can’t read [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: on writing, science, weird | No Comments »
From The New Yorker’s “The Disappearing Poet” (4 July 2005):
[Weldon] Kees himself was toiling on a script, a spy thriller called “Gadabout” … Kees was introduced as “Mr. Weldon Kees, poet, painter, artist, etcetera, composer, critic, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum.”
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Posted on May 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, language & literature, on writing, true stories | Comments Off
From "The Habit of Democracy" by Adam Gopnik in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, a review of two books about Alexis de Tocqueville:
Newcomers, like newborns, have symbolic sight. They see faces first, and features later.
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Posted on October 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book | Comments Off
From "The Habit of Democracy" by Adam Gopnik in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, a review of two books about Alexis de Tocqueville:
[Tocqueville] decided to devote himself to politics in France, and, like all French literary men, made a mess of it. (French writers are emporers of conceits; French politicians must [...]
Posted on October 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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From "The Habit of Democracy" by Adam Gopnik in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, a review of two books about Alexis de Tocqueville:
At a deeper level, too, [Tocqueville's] turn of mind was French: witty but humorless, indifferent to empirical details, constantly searching for the lucid abstraction, what he called the "general [...]
Posted on October 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, history, politics | Comments Off
From "The Habit of Democracy" by Adam Gopnik in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, a review of two books about Alexis de Tocqueville:
"There is nothing absolute in the theoretical value of political institutions," Tocqueville wrote. "Their efficiency depends almost always on the original circumstances and the social conditions of the people [...]
Posted on October 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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From "Culture Club" by Louis Menand in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker:
Things take their identities from what they are not … The concept of a highbrow culture, the culture of great books and the like, depends on the concept of a lowbrow, or popular, culture, whose characteristics highbrow culture defines iself [...]
Posted on October 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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From "The Producer" in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, an article about the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer:
His creation achieved its brilliant apotheosis a few years ago, when he reconceived Brian Grazer as a form of performance art. He started putting photographs of himself, grinning like a pixie, in dime-store frames and [...]
Posted on October 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, cool stuff, true stories | Comments Off
From "The Producer" in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, an article about the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer:
Ron Howard: But you love really sophisticated movies.
Grazer: Like what? I guess I do. I do? Which ones were you thinking of?
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Posted on October 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, fiction | Comments Off
From "The Producer" in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, an article about the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer:
[Edgar J. Scherick, the TV producer, hired Grazer when he was young, & had this to say about him:] "One day, he told me he was dissatisfied. We talked for half an hour and I [...]
Posted on October 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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From "Art for Everybody" in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, an article about the immensely popular, incredibly kitschy painter Thomas Kinkaid:
… ten million people own some product featuring his name, and most editions are signed with ink containing DNA from his hair or blood, to prevent fakes.
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Posted on October 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, security | Comments Off
From Claudia Roth Pierpont’s "Jazzbo", about George Gershwin, in The New Yorker (10 January 2005):
[Gershwin] had been saved by the piano. On a fateful day in 1910, a secondhand upright was hoisted through the family’s Second Avenue window and, to general shock, scapegrace street fighting George, age twelve, sat down and tore through a popular [...]
Posted on October 7th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, history, true stories | Comments Off
From Malcolm Gladwell’s "Getting Over It", in The New Yorker (8 November 2004):
We suffer from what Wilson and Gilbert call an impact bias: we always assume that our emotional states will last much longer than they do. We forget that other experiences will compete for our attention and emotions. We forget that out psychological immune [...]
Posted on October 7th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book | Comments Off