Accidental Blogger
A general interest blog
Category: Books, Authors & Poems
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A public defender quits his practice and starts a consulting business for applicants to creative writing programs. A massively accomplished poet and blogger about all things literary and bibliographic picks up on this new direction and sees “a larger vision of poetry in American life.” He’s at once critical, skeptical, and admiring of the project…
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Malcolm Gladwell, the tireless social commentator and examiner of sacred cows and conventional wisdoms has another provocative piece out. This time he analyzes the cultural and moral disposition of Atticus Finch, a leading character in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, the celebrated American novel set in the deep south of the 1930s Depression era. In the New Yorker article Gladwell takes a look not…
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The Misunderstanding I did not say: You are nothing to me; I said the hummingbird, the anglerfish are not amazed at themselves. I did not say: I have forgotten you; but that every day a man finds more things that trouble him. Not You are not beautiful, but that, often, when I lie in the…
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Last week, Ruchira featured an article by Matthew Crawford about the redemptive value of manual labor. My comment begins, “Crawford is full of it.” Read the comment if you care to know why I think so. Now, thanks to Ron Silliman’s blog, I see another “philosophically” styled column by Alain de Botton in the Boston…
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Rarely is a poet given the level of coverage devoted two weeks ago to Frederick Seidel in the New York Times. It takes more than merely exquisite poesy to ascend to that particular Parnassus. Seidel has more. As the article explains, he is an independently wealthy, finely suited older white man whose works address wealth…
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Want your book to shoot up on the bestsellers list? A sure fire way is to have a celebrity or an enemy endorse it. The much maligned Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is one such enemy who has helped with the brisk sales of at least two books by promoting them at world venues. The first time, Chavez…
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My sister-in-law Sukrita Paul Kumar's profile, poems and paintings in the Houston Literary Review.
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(Woman Reading : Kuniyoshi Utagawa) A recent post, a joint effort between reader Narayan Acharya and me, led fellow blogger Namit Arora to write the following comment on our blog. Ruchira, I noticed once again your approach to book reviews where you present a mostly descriptive overview about the story/plot/setting, even how others might react to it, but stay…
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(The following review contains the opinions of Ruchira Paul and Narayan Acharya.) Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, the first part of a projected trilogy may be his most straight forward narrative to date. A historian/ anthropologist by training, Ghosh has a proclivity of whipping around between distant times and places while weaving his tales. The present in his books is almost always…
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The latest Chronicle of Higher Education (January 9, 2009) includes a brief article (sub’n req’d) about an English professor and his biologist brother, who together are developing a way to use DNA to determine the local origins of medieval manuscripts. While in Europe researching the origins of a poem, Timothy L. Stinson, an assistant professor…
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Author Suketu Mehta in the New York Times on the Mumbai terrorist mayhem. MY bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.…
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So we’ve taken lately to writing about writing, and Ruchira chastises some of us for carrying on below the fold when we ought to be generating more copy for AB. I won’t bury this in the comments, then, or anywhere else, for that matter. As I write, the decision has already been rendered, but it’s…
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Prize-winning novelist Margaret Atwood’s latest is a book based on a series of lectures delivered early this year: "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth". (You can listen to them streaming online or download the podcasts from this link until Dec 19, after which they will be available for a fee at iTunes). Atwood…
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According to Malcom Gladwell, it is mostly the latter. In fact he believes that to be really good at "anything," ten years of practice are a minimum. Also, the inspiration and the perspiration must come not just from the prospective genius’ own brain and pores but from his/ her family, friends, school and community. In…
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An unusual story of a man his animal companion. (via Leiter Reports) It’s strange. I can remember all these things about Brenin and Yukon and Sitka. I can remember holding Brenin up to my face and looking in his yellow wolf eyes. I can remember the way he felt, with his soft cub fur, between…
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