#mark binelli

[route22ny]

Blackstone Grill, Gary, Indiana (1993) by Camilo José Vergara 

This photo reminded me of a Mark Binelli passage about ruin porn: “Ruin porn was generally assessed the same way as the other kind, with you-know-it-when-you-see it subjectivity. Everyone seemed to agree that Camilo Vergara's work was not ruin pornography, though he'd arguably been the Hefner of the genre.”  For Vergara, a visit to Gary during his college days in nearby South Bend was a transformative experience, ultimately merging his sociology credentials with his photographic skills to produce a substantial body of important work.  The New York Times magazine ran an excerpt of Binelli’s book, Detroit City is the Place to Be here.

[dk-thrive]

I wrote about the contents of my mind, setting all my images on paper so that I could have done with them; could sweep them out of sight and leave my mind free for the infinite imagery of the Antipodes

To help me better understand, he showed me a letter he’d written to “Fc,” his future creature. It read, in part: “All the fiction I ever wrote or read was a preparation for this, my true life’s work. In book after book of mine, I wrote about the contents of my mind, setting all my images on paper so that I could have done with them; could sweep them out of sight and leave my mind free for the infinite imagery of the Antipodes.” His reports from the interior, from his own interior, had always skirted around the edges of a central image winking at the far reaches of his consciousness, a pair of his dream jockeys crossing a finish line. How could he ignore them? 

~ Mark Binelli, Is the Next Nobel Laureate in Literature Tending Bar in a Dusty Australian Town? (The New York Times · March 27, 2018)  

[dk-thrive]

You’ll read thousands of pages, though you’ll never see, unfortunately, what they revealed to me.

Murnane smiled. He could see another connection forming. From one of his cabinets, he retrieved a typewritten manuscript page from his poetry collection. Read it, he instructed. That’s where we’d stop.

The poem, after explaining the archive over many lines, “the perfect summation/of my lifelong belief in the sport of horse-racing/as a better source of inspiration/than opera, theater, film, you name it,” ended like this:

Reader, if you’re urged to learn more about this imagined world, outlive me and my siblings and visit the library where my archives end up. You’ll find there a filing cabinet full of the sort of detail that I wanted to include in this poem but failed. You’ll read thousands of pages, though you’ll never see, unfortunately, what they revealed to me.

~ Mark Binelli, Is the Next Nobel Laureate in Literature Tending Bar in a Dusty Australian Town? (The New York Times · March 27, 2018)  

[wakingupinogden-blog]

Rollin': How the Slow Roll is Transforming Detroit

Rollin': How the Slow Roll is Transforming Detroit

It was just a sales call.  I was talking to a guy named Chris who owns a bicycle shop called Motorless City on the edge of downtown Detroit.  I’d never spoken to him before so I start these calls the way I always start calls with bike shop owners I’ve never talked to before.

“How’s business?”

“Business is good.”  Chris replies.  “We’re around the corner from the largest farmer’s market in the…

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[persinsala]

Kid Cannabis

Ispirato da un articolo pubblicato da Mark Binelli su Rolling Stone del 2005 e distribuito negli Usa nel 2014, Kid Cannabis racconta le vicende di Nate Norman, il tipico ragazzo di cui si dimentica il nome e che passa inosservato alle feste. Esempio distopico dell’american self-made man. (more…)

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[tobeshelved]

I just finished reading Detroit City is the Place to Be and it was probably the best book/article/anything I've read on the city for a long time. It didn't romanticize the city and it didn't attack the city. Instead, Mark Binelli filled his books with stories about the people in the city. The people who made a difference, positive and negative, and the people who are still influencing the city today. It was honest and I loved it.

Read the rest of my review...

[shakesperianwaffle]

One of the great pleasures of reading is the ability it affords us to peek inside the heads of fellow humans, in all their flawed and glorious diversity.

Mark Binelli

[tergueta-blog]

Pope Francis and All of Us

The objective of this site is odd.  It used to be almost embarrassing to talk about.  Advocating…

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