Blogelstein!
02/07/2009
On literary Lamaze
I was talking to a dear friend on the phone last night; she was holding her four-day-old son as we spoke.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ she said, ‘and your book.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m proud of YOU.’ We laughed.
I thought about this more today, as the drama following Alain de Botton’s riposte to the NYTimes criticism of his book unfolded - lots of marvelling over how angry he became. ‘…why not write a letter and then BURN it?’ remarked one erudite publishing professional who I follow on Twitter.
Here’s the funny thing: when I worked at a literary agency, I saw writers have a hard time following publication. I knew when I wrote my own book that it would not all be peachy; that dissatisfaction in various forms would ensue. But I still didn’t know what an odd assortment of emotions would ensue as a result of me achieving something that had seemed like a pipe dream for my whole life; that in addition to the joy and excitement I would suddenly become hypersensitive. I remarked blithely at a panel discussion just over a year ago - after I’d been contracted to write my book, but before I’d started much work on it - that I’d consider myself lucky to get bad reviews, because it would mean that people were reading it.
But I was wrong. When I got that bad review, my whole weekend was ruined: I felt a certain kind of lowness that I hadn’t felt since I was twelve and many of the girls in my class decided on what seemed to be the flip of a minute that they would cast me out. And the ire towards the reviewer was immense. It would have been so easy to send an email, a nasty Facebook message - for heaven’s sake, to start a whole hate campaign in reaction to those vicious paragraphs. But what stopped me? Thankfully, blessedly, my flatmates were about; my agent was on the other end of the phone. I poured out the vitriol, they listened, and by hour five and a half I was too exhausted to consider doing something stupid with the internet.
The moral of this drawn-out story? Writers can be isolated folk, it’s true, but today I have decideed that every writer needs a literary Lamaze partner: the hand to squeeze, the person to shout at, the individual who accepts that the writer is going to go absolutely mad at moment but who will still generously love them afterwards, and allow any absolutely mad behaviour to be blamed on something like a rush of hormones. It might well be the only way to survive this wonderful and crazy type of career.
Text posted at 22:42
East London, a strange circuitous double decker bus journey, Camden, the canal, Regent’s Park and London Zoo, Notting Hill, The City, brunch with Miss Jean Hannah Edelstein, haircut at Taylor Taylor, Tom Stoppard’s amazing Arcadia at the Duke of York’s, sunset from Southwark Bridge, back to Paris on the Eurostar! All my photos from my minitrip to London are here.
Best Internet friend date ever!
Photo posted at 15:18
Consequently, de Botton said he posted a response to the blog, that was intended for Crain alone to read.
“It was a private communication to his website, to him as a blogger,” he said. “It’s appalling that it seems that I’m telling the world.”
„Alain de Botton tells New York Times Reviewer, ‘I will hate you until I die’.
ADB is really smart and savvy and a good cultural critic, I think - I saw him speak at the School of Life on pessimism in April and was thoroughly impressed - so I am amazed by his apparent lapse in awareness here. Is one of our sharpest contemporary thinkers really this confused by the Internet’s blurring of the public and private spheres? This comment sounds madder than his original posting, which I found refreshingly honest and relatable.
Quote posted at 09:54
01/07/2009
Our True North, Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times
(via ponymalta)
Canada will always have a special place in my heart.
Quote posted at 17:15
The London Review of Breakfasts, Joyce Carol Oats
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Gratuitous picture of me and my sister, who is down from Edinburgh for a couple of days. She loves adverbs.
Photo posted at 06:35
Best neighbour Jude sweetly baked me a birthday cake. After he and Ben and Elspeth and I got home on Monday night, he declared that it was nearly birthday time, so I blew out the candles. Lovely…
Photo posted at 06:28
…and then the next night, he brought the remaining half along to the restaurant, much to the profound confusion of the nice restaurant people, and the profound amusement of me (illustrated here). What better way to mark one’s birthday in 2009 than with a recycled cake, representing the crucial contemporary values of thrift and environmentalism? None, I say!
Photo posted at 06:23
29/06/2009
» Women 'happiest at 28'
I saw this headline and thought, ‘YAY’, as tomorrow I will attain this age of sheer joy, but then I read further and realise that this was a conclusion drawn by a brand of hair colour which kindly assures me and my cohort that “Reaching and surpassing your twenties no longer triggers the downward spiral of your looks and self-confidence.”
I guess it happens when you turn 40, now.
In all seriousness, however, I am lucky to have as a role model a mother who didn’t get married until she was 30 (in the 1970s!) and who has continued to be a paragon of self-confidence and a vision of loveliness ever since, even sans the aid of drugstore hair colour.
Link posted at 09:22
28/06/2009
“The March 25, 1893 Newark Daily Advocate ran predictions of what the world of 1993 would look like.” (via Paleo-Future.) (via somethingchanged)
Actually, more books are printed these days, but otherwise, how prescient!
Quote posted at 22:26
On an unpleasant man I met at a party
“No offence,” said the man at the party who’d just asked how long I’d lived in London, “but if I were you, I’d get a new accent. No one likes American accents.”
“No, that is quite offensive,” I said.
“I’m not anti-American,” he said, “but you really should learn to speak differently.”
“Um, no,” I said, and went to speak to someone else.
Later, we passed on the stairs.
“What’s your problem?” he said. I was silent.
“Fat motherfucker,” he said.
I chose not to take it personally: not just because I am neither fat nor a motherfucker, but because I assume he was just enraged that he wasted £10 on his copy of The Game.
Text posted at 18:28
‘Like Orpheus, Michael Jackson was destroyed by his fans’ | Music | The Guardian
Quote posted at 09:38
Things I have done so you don't have to (1)
A high ropes obstacle course after sleeping only between the hours of 5 and 7 am. The feeling that I had at the moment of impact after my body was flung across the forest on the end of a cable into a knotted-rope net was unique, and not recommended.Text posted at 00:15
26/06/2009
On the King of Pop
I can’t get on board with the hysteria; I mean, it’s sad that he died, but I have always felt quite indifferent about him. Why? I blame my parents: when all the cool families were rocking out to Thriller, favourite Edelstein family albums of 1985 included the King Singers and flautist James Galway and a bit of Marian Anderson. (Oh, and the soundtrack to Tubby the Tuba, which always made me cry, because Tubby was so, so lonely.) And we didn’t get cable television until I was 19, so MTV was completely out of the question. As a result, I only became cognizant of MJ when I was nine or ten, and he was already quite weird and questionably bad to children, though of course I like ‘Billie Jean’ as much as the next girl called ‘Jean’.Text posted at 18:11
