(1)
My writing education – http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/my-writing-education-a-timeline?src=longreads. An
inspiring article – on role models, good teachers, goodness in people, hope and
persistence. Coming across a role model like this, who is infallible, a perfect
human being – that is so rare.
Last week I happened to connect
briefly with a blogger whom I was reading for more than 10 years – I was
introduced to many interesting books based on his recommendations. One of which
is still a hard nut to crack for me (A Thousand Plateaus – Deleuze and
Guattari), but it is one of his lifetime favorites. For me it is like drinking
green tea for the first time. So I asked him how he came to like it – he said parts
of that book hit him like a train. I was fascinated by that – to be moved that
much by a book. When I read some parts of this article, it reminded me of that
phrase.
What we’re doing in writing is
not all that different from what we’ve been doing all our lives, i.e., using
our personalities as a way of coping with life. Writing is about charm, about
finding and accessing and honing ones’ particular charms.
Literature is a form of
fondness-for-life. It is love for life taking verbal form.
A story’s positive virtues are
not different from the positive virtues of its writer. A story should be
honest, direct, loving, restrained. It can, by being worked and reworked, come
to have more power than its length should allow. A story can be a compressed bundle
of energy, and, in fact, the more it is thoughtfully compressed, the more power
it will have.
Knowing him has helped us grow
into better versions of ourselves: more dignified, less selfish. This, of
course, is what a ‘role model’ is: someone who, by gracefully embodying
positive virtues, causes you to aspire to them yourself.
(2)
I came across the above through http://longreads.com/.
When the reading has reduced to sound bites in social media or short articles
in newspapers which offer quick dump, long form articles exploring a subject or
profile of a person is refreshing. Longreads features most read long form
articles around the web every week and many times I come across some gems from
there. Another of similar one is #7 Deadly Reads – Sitdown Sunday http://www.thejournal.ie/7-deadly-reads/news/.
New Yorker, The Atlantic, Rolling Stones, NYT etc end up being the most
featured. The Hindu in India does long form, but many of them are so scholarly
that it is hard to digest. Not sure if there are any other good ones in India.
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