Adam Haslett – Union Atlantic

More recently had come the giant cars, the ones that looked as if they should have gun turrets mounted on their roofs, manned by the children glaring from the backseat.

Sunday Serial – An Extraordinary Imbroglio (1) *

 

Standards probe at Dog Road Institute

Reports are coming in of an extraordinary imbroglio in Arrapamatta involving the well-known academic, Arnold Egbert Stringer,

Writers’ habits

I am a completely horizontal author….

Sophie Hannah – Mountains out of small hills*

 

Dogs are objecting to the word dogmatic,

the use of certain phrases – barking mad,

The dark birds of sorrow

Chinese proverb:

Sunday Serial – For Art’s Sake (3)

Nico had got halfway round the room by the time Myron came back. As soon as I let myself in that Saturday I could tell he was there, even though there was nothing obviously different. The house just felt inhabited.

Tales from The Owl – The Idle Owl

 

Two owls were born into the same family. The older was obedient, hardworking and well-mannered, all in all a credit to his family. The younger was idle, rude and vain. He spent all his time staring at himself in windows or ponds and bullying other birds out of birdbaths so that he could sleek and polish his feathers.

Crossing the bridge *

Dust on powerlines makes them hum in the rain

as you drive uphill and take the turn

Sunday Serial – For Art’s Sake (2)

When I went in the next weekend Nico had painted a jungle around and over the pigeons so you could only see the shape of their bodies and their eyes peering out. For the jungle he’d used a rough, shiny emerald paint. You could almost hear the leaves rustling against each other. He’d moved the two pictures to the end of the gallery so they were the first thing you saw when you stood at the double doors. I looked at his two paintings and then at the other blodges that hung along the walls and for the first time in my life I had some sort of idea what art might be about.

Why write?

From George Plimpton’ s The Writers’ Chapbook (Viking, 1989):

I can’t do anything else. I have always regretted getting involved with literature right up to my neck. I would have preferred to have been a monk; but , as I said, I was torn between wanting fame and wishing to renounce the world.  Eugene Ionesco ( 36)