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I went to a wedding the other day for the daughter of one of my mother’s oldest friends. The bride was not much older than me, which might have struck a kind of nerve if I wasn’t already so absorbed in my own emotional fatigue. There are too many things I am failing at, so many unresolved predicaments that take precedence. And so maybe I felt it all the more keenly, the sense that I was a loser in the surest way, watching this woman accept, with grace and earnest enthusiasm, this man as her beloved for the rest of their natural lives (they were wed inside the hall of a huge church by a supremely traditional pastor--there was no way words like “pact” and “eternal” were not going to enter into this) in a perfectly beautiful ceremony. Oh, how simple and lovely, I thought. Some part of her life has been irrevocably decided. I considered this a measure of success.

The cake was a dry and flavorless sponge, warm from sitting under the lights. There was no dancing, but driving home on the highway we had the best view of the evening fireworks show at the theme park.

But he’s a failure, and, you know, there’s nothing more bitter and more dangerous than failed artists.

JOHN BANVILLE

#john banville

My office sent me to San Diego for a weekend. I stayed in a beautiful hotel in a room with a comfortable bed and every afternoon a woman came in and arranged everything like new. It seemed the easiest way to be in the world and I slept poorly every night. I read nothing. I walked for hours.

Time is everything. I am 55 now, and my first grandchild is expected in June. It has been many years since I was a young man, let alone an apprentice writer. But the eager, fearful, self-hectoring spirit of the beginner is slow to fade. With my 8th book just begun--and with deep regret for the desolate wastes of time that have kept it from being my 10th or 12th--I feel I haven't really started yet. And I suppose this rather ludicrous condition will persist, for better or worse, until my time runs out. --RICHARD YATES

#richard yates

People manage to believe in magic--of one kind or another. And ghosts. And the influence of the stars. And reincarnation. And a life everlasting. But not enough room is allowed for strangeness: that birds and animals know the way home; that a blind man, having sensed the presence of a wall, knows as well where to walk as you or I; that there have been many recorded instances of conversations between two persons who did not speak the same language but, each speaking his own, nevertheless understood each other perfectly.

William Maxwell, "The fisherman who had nobody to go out in his boat with him" from Maxwell's All the Days and Nights

Would you not trust a voice like his? Would you not trust a compassion like this?

#william maxwell

We had four days of fog. I ran in the early morning when the fog was packed dense as cotton and I was afraid of what waited for me in the distance. Driving through fog is bewildering, a precarious exercise in anticipating stoplights, merge lanes, traffic signals.

Here is what the fog gave me: the extraordinary, near-spectral sight of a coyote trotting low to the ground out of a grove of homes, making for the hills.

I am failing everyday.

I just would write strange stories. And nobody liked them, like, nobody ever looked at me and was like, 'You. Someday I'm gonna know you. Someday, someone's gonna read you a list of everything you did in the last year.' Instead, like, everyone said I was terrible at it. In high school I would write people's college essays for them, and this English teacher of mine, whom I dedicate every fucking story to, came to me and said 'It's not just that this is unethical--it's that you're not that good at it.'

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, in this incredible interview with Longform.

That would be Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who is now a contributing writer for GQ and The New York Times Magazine, with bylines in a shit ton of other amazing publications. DON'T GIVE UP. WORK HARD. GET YOURS.

#taffy brodesser-akner

In the bad type of thin pamphlets, in hand-set lines on imported paper, people's hard lives and hopeless ambitions have expressed themselves more directly and heartbreakingly than they have ever expressed in any work of art: it is as if the writers had sent you their ripped-out arms and legs, with "This is a poem" scrawled on them in lipstick. After a while one is embarrassed not so much for them as for poetry, which is for these poor poets one more of the openings against which everyone in the end beats his brains out; and one finds it unbearable that poetry should be so hard to write - a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey in which there is for most of the players no tail, no donkey, not even a booby prize.

Randall Jarrell, "Bad Poets"

send help.

#randall jarrell

(c) Nigel Parry

"The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice."

-- William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

#william maxwell #lit

YUNG TOLSTOY

Arose somewhat late and read, but did not have time to write. Poiret came, I fenced, and did not send him away (sloth and cowardice). Ivanov came, I spoke with him for too long (cowardice). Koloshin (Sergei) came to drink vodka, I did not escort him out (cowardice). At Ozerov’s argued about nothing (habit of arguing) and did not talk about what I should have talked about (cowardice). Did not go to Beklemishev’s (weakness of energy). During gymnastics did not walk the rope (cowardice), and did not do one thing because it hurt (sissiness).—At Gorchakov’s lied (lying). Went to the Novotroitsk tavern (lack of fierté). At home did not study English (insufficient firmness). At the Volkonskys’ was unnatural and distracted, and stayed until one in the morning (distractedness, desire to show off, and weakness of character).

lol yung tolstoy used to keep a diary where he critiqued himself on his own daily activities. A+ for sissiness.

#tolstoy

at any time in your life you can decide for yourself to make all the resolutions you'd like and to go a different way. if you falter, take it up with a stronger grip the next time. everything you want requires hard work, and everything you don't want requires hard work, too. it's difficult either way, is what i'm saying.

i hope you all enjoyed a wonderful holiday season. i hope this year turns out to be better than the last. i hope you stay warm and healthy and safe. i hope you rise, rise, rise.

The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.

Joan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook"

#joan didion

I don't trust guys with powerful jawlines and I don't trust girls who call themselves hideous ogres and I don't trust jaded dudes from extremely well-connected families in Southern California and I don't trust anyone who doesn't read fiction and I don't trust guys who "pick up" guitar their sophomore year of college and I definitely absolutely don't trust the fuckers in maroon-colored Vans and skinny jeans. HAPPY HOLIDAYS.

Live long enough to see a great American novelist who can also pull off fakie ollie switch front crooks or the skater of the year who can also write a story as good to rival any of William Trevor's worst ones.

#alex olson #dylan rieder #william trevor

... [It] is a collection of short stories, not a novel. This in itself is a disappointment. It seems to diminish the book's authority, making the author seem like somebody who is just hanging on to the gates of Literature, rather than safely settled inside.

Alice Munro, "Fiction"

LOL THIS STORY. Munro is straight up trolling everything u ever held true about your precious, beloved ideals of fiction. She is indicting your every assumption about the level of sheer craft and guts it takes to make a story work. She is taking u to school for your inane assumptions. And she is doing it with complete grace, humility and storytelling prowess to make your head spin. Let me leave u with this gem, from the same story: "Well--who wants to buy a book written by a grouch or a loser?" MUNRO LETTIN' U KNO.

#alice munro #lit

There's no motivation like the sweet, sweet desire to just put it over everyone else. I'll show you, I'll show you, I'll show you.

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