http://www.chadpollock.com Oh Solitude, if I must with thee dwell... Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:37:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Like an infant that has not yet smiled. I droop and drift, as though I belonged nowhere. All men have enough and to spare; I alone seem to have lost everything. Mine is indeed the very mind of an idiot, So dull am I. The world is full of people that shine; I alone am dark. They look ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/10/03/the-tao-of-coetzee/ The name David Foster Wallace is seldom mentioned without the word "prodigy" in the same sentence. Sometimes "prodigy" is preceded by "fucking," as in the following: "David Foster Wallace is a fucking prodigy." Sometimes this sentence is further punctuated with an "asshole" at the end, either with an ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/09/15/if-you-are-reborn-you-can-be-my-child/ Two Reviews of Chinese Writers "My story begins on January 1, 1950..." So begins Mo Yan's Life and Death are Wearing Me Out. The narrator is the landlord Ximen Nao, and on this first day of January 1950, Ximen Nao is executed as a bad element, an impediment to the revolution, ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/08/27/life-and-death-are-wearing-me-out/ I am currently obsessed with Andre Dubus. He is a contemporary American Short Story writer. A heckuva talented writer and a great human. I'll write more on him later, but I can't resist throwing out some of his good quotes on writing. An older writer knows what a ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/07/31/more-of-andre-on-writing/ Joan Didion is like my older, sarcastic, world-weary sister. Reading The Year of Magical Thinking is reading the diary of my sister. I see the workings of her mind; I hear the depth of her words, her feelings on the loss of my brother-in-law, her spouse of 40 years. ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/07/27/the-joan-didion-talent-search/ Looking at journals as I prepare to move, I came across this sonnet I wrote some time in '97 or '98. Forgot I used to write sonnets. Twenty tippled years from today, sitting On a rough hewn and slatted porch, musing With a mason jar in hand and sipping Gin with a ragged ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/07/27/twenty-tippled-years-from-today/ "Wanting to know absolutely what a story is about, and to be able to say it in a few sentences, is dangerous: it can lead us to wanting to possess a story as we possess a cup. We know the function of a cup, and we drink from it, ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/07/21/nugget-of-wisdom-from-andre/ Fury: a novel © 2001 by Salman Rusdie Fury is my first Rusdie novel, and my only excuse for having spent twenty years now as a reader of contemporary fiction without once reading Rushdie is: "I don't like the guy." Nothing to do with his writing, about which I knew ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/07/13/greying-temples-thinning-hair-salman-rushdie/ Fingersmith is the type of literary novel that's not being written much these days, a style that fits more with the age of Queen Victoria than the age of Global Terrorism, and therein lies its beauty. Set in nineteenth century England, Fingersmith narrates the intersecting stories of two young women in ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/06/06/fingersmith-sarah-waters/ PC Magazine has a list of recommended free software. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2271644,00.asp It's freeware, but not necessarily Open Source. I would not have picked all the things they pick. I especially hate the Google Toolbar. I've found it to be clunky. It takes up too much memory, ... http://www.chadpollock.com/2008/03/20/free-stuff/