Here I am, with my gal Cleo, in the airport lounge. I am reclining on a fake chaise longue, underneath a palm-ish plant, gazing at … a bunch of Qantas and Cathay and BA planes being loaded. My flight is delayed and I’ve suddenly got too much time–not usually a problem I encounter in my [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Books’
December 2, 2008
From Casanova to Cleo
Well, this is frustrating, but it does happen when you write a book. Sometimes you go down one path in your research before discovering that it’s a dead end.
Then you have a choice: You can somehow finagle it into your book and hope that it works. Journalists do that a lot, because they don’t like [...]
November 30, 2008
When Casanova didn’t find his writer’s voice
By coincidence, I came across a passage in Giacomo Casanova’s memoirs that seems to sum up perfectly the mystery surrounding a writer’s voice that Cheri and I talked about yesterday.
Casanova, a Venetian, was studying French and visiting a teacher three times a week for an entire year. Once, he composed some poetry and showed it [...]
November 29, 2008
The Ur-Story
A follow-up to my my post on why truth is in stories: Many of you know about this fascinating theory that there really is only one story, which we tell one another again and again in infinitely many variations.
This is the so-called Monomyth, which I prefer to call the Ur-Story.
The man who popularized the idea [...]
November 26, 2008
Peaking early or climbing slowly
Back to the bibliography for my book. Today: David Galenson, “Old Masters and Young Geniuses.”
Folks, this is an important book. Notice I did not say “riveting” or “thrilling” or “entertaining”. It’s short and academic, not for the beach. But let me say it again: It’s important.
Galenson has looked into the life cycles of creative types. [...]
November 16, 2008
All those gushing book reviews
Joe Queenan in the New York Times has an amusing but stirring piece on ridiculously over-the-top book reviews–in short, most reviews:
The least-discussed subject in the world of belles-lettres: book reviews that any author worth his salt knows are unjustifiably enthusiastic. …
the vast majority of book reviews are favorable, even though the vast majority of books [...]
November 14, 2008
Casanova, aged 11, discovers wit
I’m reading The Story of My Life by Giacomo Casanova and arrive at the following event, which took place when the boy was eleven years old.
(And yes, this is part of the bibliography for my book. If you’re trying to figure out why, I leave, for the time being, the subtlest of hints here.)
Casanova [...]
November 12, 2008
Sprezzatura in writing
A line [of poetry] will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
William Butler Yeats, Adam’s Curse
I just came across this quote from Yeats in Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power. More specifically, in Law Number 30, which says (page 245):
Make your accomplishments seem [...]
November 11, 2008
Goldsworthy on The Punic Wars
And back again to the bibliography for my book.
We’re still in the “history” section, as opposed to the “biography” section, but we’ve mostly dealth with the ancient sources (Polybius, Livy and Plutarch). So now I’ll move into the modern writers.
If I had to choose just one book to give you a fun but thorough overview [...]
November 3, 2008
The father of biography
Let’s get back to the bibliography for my book.
Right now–while we’re still dealing with the ancient sources–I’m going through the texts in chronological order. And after Polybius and Livy, that brings me to Plutarch.
You recall that Herodotus was the father of history. Well, Plutarch must be the father of biography. Like Herodotus, Thucydides and Polybius, [...]
October 31, 2008
Do you Poegle?
My friend and colleague Justin Hendrix and his co-author have just started their Poegle site.
And I am shocked–shocked!–that you don’t know what a Poegle is. A Poegle is, of course, a poem made with the input of Google. It is apparently the most avant-garde form of poetry, but one with a long heritage.
They’re running a [...]
October 30, 2008
Backlash moment
I’ve been flying a lot this week, on a route that GoGo now covers (see map). Each time at the gate, a male-female pair of hip, young marketers (the woman in each case being smarter, hipper, attractive and Indian) offered me and the other lop-sided laptop-bag-toting types in the boarding queue a promotion to get [...]
October 25, 2008
Livy
I left off my series on the bibliography for my book with a long post on Polybius. Polybius, as I said, was one of the greatest historians ever, but most of his books were lost. This means that for the history of Hannibal’s war against Rome we have to rely heavily on another ancient source. [...]
October 21, 2008
Polybius
First off in this series of posts about the bibliography for my book–in the category of ancient sources–is, of course, Polybius. His life is one of the most fascinating ever lived, and his importance to us–especially to us Americans, as I will explain in the follow-up post–is enormous.
Let me lead up to Polybius in three [...]
October 21, 2008
My bibliography
A while ago, I promised Baltimore Bookworm to start blogging the bibliography for my book, and I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Baltimore Bookworm, I haven’t forgotten. Starting at once, I’ll drip out the books and academic papers I’ve been reading and plan to read.
The rest of you: Please feel free to infer my [...]
October 15, 2008
Uncle Lulu
That guy with the cigar on this West German stamp from 1987 is my great-uncle, Ludwig Erhard, or “Onkel Lulu” in our family.
Why is he on this blog?
Well, I’ve been posting a lot about writing and language and style recently, all of which of course has a lot to do with the writing of my [...]
October 13, 2008
Window into the mind of a writer….
… brought to you by this week’s New Yorker:
1) Assumption about the target audience of readers:
2) Default state of writer:
2) Advanced state of writer, in human interaction:
3) Premonition serving as motivator to continue in 1, 2 & 3:
October 12, 2008
The home stretch of writing
A big moment of sorts last week: I finished the first and rough draft of the book.
That doesn’t mean I’m done. But it does mean that I’ve started the second round.
What happened over the past year is roughly this: The basic idea proved better than I could have hoped. And the book almost wrote itself, [...]
