Over at Nerve, my essay response to StuffWhitePeopleLike.com has been published:
I also just noticed it’s been linked to from Jewcy.com, where Izzy Grinspan relates it to a discussion of intermarriage (another issue that confuses and angers me, but that I didn’t touch on this time around). Very flattered to be link-worthy.
Hola from Buenos Aires.
The SF Chronicle just published the last piece I wrote before I left the country. (Finished the morning I flew out.)
Enjoy:
I finally got around to scanning in my recent Paste book review. For some reason, it was never uploaded on the magazine’s website. Click the above image if you want to see it nice and big and readable (as a pdf).
You’re welcome.
At least these are the ones I wrote down:
1 - A Good War Is Hard to Find — David Griffith
2 - Mysteries of Pittsburgh — Michael Chabon
3 - Namesake — Jumpha Lahiri
4 - Seize the Day — Saul Bellow
5 - Ten Days in the Hills — Jane Smiley
6 - Dog Years — Mark Doty
7 - Strange Tribe — John Hemingway
8 - The Adventures of Augie March — Saul Bellow
9 - Project X — Jim Shepard
10 - The Ambidextrist — Peter Rock
11 - A Way of Life, Like Any Other — Darcy O’Brien
12 - Patient 002 — Floyd Skoot
13 - Brother One Cell — Cullen Thomas
14 - Hear The Wind Sing — Haruki Murakami
15 - Pastoralia — George Saunders
16 - It’s Kind of a Funny Story — Ned Vizzini
17 - The Dead Fish Museum — Charles D’Ambrosio
18 - Eeeee Eee Eeee — Tao Lin
19 - Revolutionary Road — Richard Yates
20 - The Things They Carried — Tim O’Brien
21 - Bed — Tao Lin
22 - You are a little bit happier than I am — Tao Lin
23 - The Great Gatsby — Fitzgerald (r)
24 - Understanding Depression — Dr. & Dr. Blah Blah
25 - Going to Pieces without Falling Apart — Mark Epstein
26 - Cion — Zakes Mda
27 - (Not That You Asked) — Steve Almond
28 - Beast of No Nation — Uzodinma Iweala
29 - July’s People — Nadine Gordimer
30 - Beethoven was 1/16 Black: And other Stories — Nadine Gordimer
31 - Diary of a Bad Year — J.M. Coetzee
32 - Decent of Man — TC Boyle
33 - Phallic Frenzy — Joseph Lanza
34 - A Moveable Feast — Ernest Hemingway
35 - Joy Comes In the Morning — Jonathan Rosen
36 - The Ha-Ha — Dave King
37 - The Book of Dahlia — Elisa Albert
38 - Wildlife — Richard Ford
39 - Birds of America — Lorrie Moore
40 - The Golden Compass — Philip Pullman
41 - Truth & Beauty — Ann Patchett
42 - Bel Canto — Ann Patchett
43 - The Subtle Knife — Philip Pullman
44 - The Patron Saint of Liars — Ann Patchett
45 - The Lost Tribe — Paul Zakrezewski, ed
46 - The Collected Stories of Richard Yates — Richard Yates
“Generally people conduct their lives almost utterly through their imagination of themselves and who they want to be. But you start as a writer in college and you continue writing and some of your classmates stop, or they never publish a book, and you wonder, is it just luck? Did something happen to them? Or did they just not stick with it in some way? And I think the only thing I’ve ever had on my side, more than a flashing ability or a talent or anything like that, was a determination not to quit. Tenaciousness is what got me to publish a couple of books, I think.” — Jeffrey Eugenides