“We see our parents aging before our eyes, but we regard our grandparents as such oaks, their mortality not once entering our thoughts because they have always, to us, been old. By the time I began to realize the urgency of learning about him, he was gone. I never had the chance — or, to […]
Quotes
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Children of Immigrants Often Involuntarily Lose a Language
“First-language loss occurs almost across the board by immigrants’ third generation, Light says. That is, Daniel’s children would most commonly be the ones experiencing this issue, with Daniel as a bilingual father. Factors such as home life, the concentration of an immigrant community and the length of time away from a native-speaking environment determine the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Making of Citizen Kane
“I must admit that it was intended consciously as a social document. … [but] the storyteller’s first duty is to the story.” -From the 1991 documentary “The Complete Citizen Kane,” on the Orson Welles masterpiece. The film features interviews with Welles from 1960 and 1982, as well as an interview with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, […]
Posted inFiction, Quotes
There Is Just One Problem with Feeling Alive
“Sophie stood on the gravel path, thinking. She tried to think extra hard about being alive so as to forget that she would not be alive forever. But it was impossible. As soon as she concentrated on being alive now, the thought of dying also came into her mind. The same thing happened the other […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Lessons in Fame from P.T. Barnum's Autobiography
From Lapham’s Quarterly, lessons on fame and advertising from The Life of P. T. Barnum, which was published in 1855. “Put on the appearance of business, and generally the reality will follow.” And what follows then? Profit. How is this miracle achieved? First, through false superlatives and inflated rhetoric, e.g., “The world-famous _______ is the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Grief, Memory, and the Vortex Effect
In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion’s memoir about the death of her husband and her daughter’s sudden sickness, Didion describes being paralyzed by memories of her family triggered during mundane circumstances. She calls this experience “the vortex effect.” Matt Zoller Seitz’s Salon essay, “All The Things That Remind Me Of Her,” shows the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Grief, Memory, and the Vortex Effect
In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion’s memoir about the death of her husband and her daughter’s sudden sickness, Didion describes being paralyzed by memories of her family triggered during mundane circumstances. She calls this experience “the vortex effect.” Matt Zoller Seitz’s Salon essay, “All The Things That Remind Me Of Her,” shows the […]