#the anthologist

[litsnaps]

[quotespile]

You need the art in order to love the life.

Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist

[philosophybitmaps]

[quotessentially]

From Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist

[exhaled-spirals]

‘Carpe diem’ doesn’t mean seize the day — it means something gentler and more sensible. 'Carpe diem’ means pluck the day. [...] Very different piece of advice. What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day’s stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things — so that the day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to a thinness, and a tightness, and then snaps softly away at its weakest point [...]. Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant — pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, forage the day.

Nicholson Bauer, The Anthologist: A Novel

[wellconstructedsentences]

She lowered her head to the grocery bag she held and she breathed in. She said, 'Don't you love the smell of brown paper bags filled with raw vegetables?' " 'I like it very much,' I said. Trying to stay on an even keel but feeling a lot of love for her and wanting to lie down on the sidewalk as a result.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

[nondualreality]

I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.

Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist

[therumpus]

When it comes to a university, that’s important. Because obviously professors, despite the best efforts of administrators, are still authority figures to kids who are, after all, still teenagers when they show up. So to have someone attract people to poetry in any form is tremendous.

THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW with Erik Kennedy