Funny how satisfying Goodreads is. ("Goo dreads? What's he talkin' about, Mabel?") I got an account back in May but didn't start using it much until this month. It has the giddy thrill of Netflix coupled with the highbrow sensibility of being elbow-deep in literature.
Was wondering just now who founded Goodreads. It was Otis Chandler, evidently not the same Otis Chandler who was formerly a principled publisher of The Los Angeles Times.
Yesterday Louisa was insisting that I know all things. I had to explain that, really, I only know some things.
Does the bottom of the web page count anymore? If you put something down there, can you really think anyone will ever see it? This is what I worry about as I work on mikejanssen.net.
Ha, there's a "net" attached to my name, fancy that. I wish the Web could produce for me Eudora Welty's "The Wide Net," which I read in college and remember with great admiration. It couldn't though.
News: I am blogging on the Current blog on Fridays. (It's that thing on the right-hand side of the page.) You will perceive my inimitable style through the terse compressed language of squeezing a post into two or three sentences. People say this is good practice. (Rebecca Blood has advised as such before, can't find where at the moment.) But I fear our culture is tilting toward a suppressive clipped-ness in speech. Fine, let me narrow my scope--our news media are tilting that way. Not sure if the trend goes beyond that. But maybe we should be encouraged to write florid, diffuse prose, like that of Tom Wolfe or Lester Bangs or before them Thomas Wolfe, in his own way.
Have you read Look Homeward Angel? The book has a sweat to it, an earthiness that sticks to your fingers after you've put it down. I'm not kidding.
God, why do I ever write blog entries within this tiny little window in MT? really.
I was pleased to be listening to WAMU the other day and to hear Barry Louis Polisar being interviewed. Apparently one of his songs is prominently featured in the opening credits of Juno, which I still have yet to see. Polisar came to my elementary school when I was in third grade or so and made all the kids laugh with his Shel Silversteinesque sense of humor. I remember getting an LP of his and sitting in front of my parents’ Sony turntable, listening to it and reading the lyrics on the album sleeve. It’s good to know he’s still doing his thing.