Last night I made myself a version of duk guk, a rice-cake and beef soup that is traditionally served on New Year’s. I was trying to recreate the remembered pleasure of the soup from my childhood, but I also wanted to adapt it for the adult I am now. As I write this, I’m eating my third bowl of it in 24 hours, so the result was pretty satisfying.
This soup is not any kind of an official soup, which is to say, fans of either soup it’s based on–duk guk or kimchichigae (a spicy kimchi stew)–will look askance at it, I’m sure. I’ve made it twice now. But it is neither of those soups. I don’t know what to call it–duk kimchichigae?–but in any case, here is how I made it, in case you want to try it. Keep reading →
This fall I’m bringing my friend Porochista to Amherst College to read from her debut novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects. The novel is, to my mind, one of the most enjoyable novels I’ve read recently. I’ll quote to you from one of my favorite parts, a description of insomnia:
Xerxes couldn’t recall experiencing a full night’s sleep in many, many, many months. Of coure he knew he had to have slept somewhere here and there, some tidbits of snooze, just enough to keep the body and head going at a bare minimum, but he couldn’t remember a “normal” night of it. Slowly, over the course of a few seasons he had felt himself fade more and more into a constantly living phantom, an uninterrupted consciousness that existed at a consistent, downgraded vibrancy–lit, always, but always dimly lit. The lack of sleep, while it increased the quantity of his active life–if it could be called that, those wasted frustrated hours staring at clocks and praying to thin air for even a few minutes worth of active-mind shutdown–sucked away at the quality of his life. He was always living, but day after day that living grew shittier and shittier. He never felt the cliche more poignantly–every day we are dying. That was it: without the intermission of sleep, all he had to face was that his heartbeats were running, but running out as well.
It wasn’t until late September 2001 that he gave up even trying. He simply stopped sleeping for days at a time, not even getting intoa horizontal position, not even offing lights, not even trying to kid it. He didn’t want to sleep, suddenly–who knew what could happen to the world if you looked away too long?
In the above clip, she sits down with Mark Molaro for an interview with him, for his web program, The Alcove.
I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments — genuine savings — in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, and employees out of work, out of luck, and out of hope.
And then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of sixty-year-old banking and securities regulations designed during the Great Depression to prevent exactly that kind of human and economic damage. Who pushed for the removal of that firewall? An administration and Congress who are the political marionettes of the speculators, and who are well rewarded for their efforts with indispensable campaign contributions. Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the web of an electoral system that effectively limits competition to those who can afford to spend millions in their run for office. Like it or not, candidates know that the largesse on which their political futures depend will last only as long as their votes are satisfactory to the sleek “bundlers” who turn the spigots of cash on and off.
Only if you ever intend to teach at the college level. There are some provosts who would be unlikely to allow even, say, Gabriel Garcia Marquez to be hired, should he lack an MFA or Phd. Many writers in days gone by without MFAs made it bad for the rest of us, by taking teaching jobs and then being terrible teachers, at which point administrations began requiring degrees, and not just publications and awards.
2. Do writers need to study? Aren’t they better off just writing?
Even the Beats read each other and revised, no matter what Jack Kerouac said. That’s why it wasn’t called “The Beat”, but, “The Beats”. There was more than one. Keep reading →
It’s late, and almost early. The semester is over and I’ve been receiving finals all day from students. I was about to go to bed and I thought, there’s something for me in these Tolstoy letters. Look and see if there’s something for this day.
I found this, and it seemed like a suitable message to leave here for my students in Fiction 2, who read Anna Karenina with me this semester:
[4 lines omitted] P.I. Biryukov came to see me a week ago, and has been staying until our amily arrived, but now they have arrived, and he wants to leave soon—tomorrow. I thought about him and introduced him because he and I said something about you which is very important, namely: all real artists are only artists because they have something to write, know how to write, and have the ability to write, while at the same time reading and looking at and criticising themselves most severely. I fear you have too much of this ability, and it prevents you from doing for people what they need. I’m talking about the Gospel Pictures*. Nobody except you knows the content of the pictures which are in your heart; nobody except you can express them so sincerely, and nobody can paint them like you. Suppose some of them will be on a lower level than the best. Suppose they won’t be finished to perfection. Nevertheless, those on the very lowest level will be a great and important acquisition for true art and for the one and only true business of life. I imagined all of this particularly vividly when I received the beautiful print of The Last Supper, made for Marya Alexandrovna. (Sofya Andreyevna had 10 of them done without your permission. You will surely give it.) I know it’s impossible to advise and explain to an artist what to do. They have their own private way of working. But I was terribly sorry to think that the wonderful job you have begun won’t be completed. I was dragged off to the exhibition;** I think there is nothing to compare with pictures as works, not of the hands, but of the human soul. How did your talks with Tretyakov end. I’ll be glad when your pictures are there. I’m still picking over my article***; I think it’s necessary, but God knows. I want to finish it as soon as possible, to free myself for other work which is crowding in…
*[a footnote here explains that Gay, known to us now as Nikolai Ge, was working at the time on Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and The Last Supper]
** [something wonderful called "The XIV Wanderer's Exhibition"]
But, with no new Harry Potter book out, what are they reading?
It may be these are unrelated forces. But it may not be. Of course, it could be the book trailer phenom on youtube, improving sales. Of which I think this one, by Dennis Cass, is perhaps the best one:
Dennis’s new book is called Head Case: How I Almost Lost My Mind, Trying To Understand My Brain. He also has what looks like a website, called Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome. I think it’s my new favorite thing. Just, if you look carefully, it’s not really a website. It’s a Social Network. Youtube promos are basically yesterday…
There are these two guys who sit near me in math class and I keep thinking they must have some kind of connection, cause they’re so cute together. One of them has short black curly hair. If that’s you…well, good luck, he is cute. But don’t spend too much time falling in love with straight guys cause you’ll just break your heart that way.
Then, a few entries down, there was this: Keep reading →
People Magazine is catching a certain amount of flack this morning for having published an item that misidentifies a photo of Karl Yune as Rain, in the new Speed Racer film. Speed Racer, it’s worth pointing out, has 3 young attractive men of Korean descent on the cast, setting what might be a record for an American film (there’s no statistics on this).
So that this confusion never, ever happens again, here is a guide to these incredible-looking men who are appearing with increasing frequency on our tv and movie screens here in America.
Think of him as being a Korean Justin Timberlake, maybe, but mixed with a Korean Jake Gyllenhal. You can check out his Donnie-Darko-esque turn in the as yet untranslated I’m A Cyborg. The below still from that was one of last year’s most popular image headers on this blog.
He’s shown an extraordinary range as a performer, able to dance around in angel wings in a Korean rap video, or appear in art-house Korean indie films. He’s most famous to US audiences for his dance battles with Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report. He is an incredible dancer. In this clip, note the Dance Dance Revolution sudden-death round.
