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A writer’s desk
The work week has ended, and the Sabbath queen is on her way. Maybe tomorrow I will clear away some of the clutter. Not now, though; not now.
Friday, July 31, 2009
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Commonplace book
orig. A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
OED
Reviews
- Auslander, “Hope: A Tragedy”
- Auster, “Invisible”
- Bailey, “The Astrologer”
- Bauer, “Frances and Bernard”
- Beha, “What Happened to Sophie Wilder”
- Bellow, “Letters”
- Bernays, “The Man on the Third Floor”
- Berry, “What Are People For?”
- “The Best American Poetry”
- Brombert, “Musings on Mortality”
- Broyard, “Intoxicated by My Illness”
- Buckley, “They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?”
- Cameron, “Coral Glynn”
- Cantalupo, “Emma Wolf’s Short Stories”
- Chabon, “Telegraph Avenue”
- Clayton, “Mitzvah Man”
- Cohen, “Amateur Barbarians”
- Connelly, “The Brass Verdict”
- Eco, “The Prague Cemetery”
- Erdrich, “The Round House”
- Ford, “Independence Day”
- Franzen, “Freedom”
- Gates, “The Signifying Monkey”
- Gorra, “Portrait of a Novel”
- Gurganus, “Local Souls”
- Halkin, “Melisande! What Are Dreams?”
- Hamilton, “Death of a Citizen”
- Harding, “Tinkers”
- Heller, “The Believers”
- Henkin, “The World Without You”
- Hill, “Grand Strategies”
- Hitchcock, “Another Shore”
- Hoeveler, “Watch on the Right’
- Jacobson, “Zoo Time”
- Jeffers, “Norman Podhoretz”
- Jones, ”Adventures of Douglas Bragg”
- Kamenetz, “Burnt Books”
- Kernan, “The Death of Literature”
- Krauss, “Great House”
- Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby”
- Lynn, “The Exiles”
- McCarry, “Shelley’s Heart”
- McCarry, “The Shanghai Factor”
- McMurtry, “Literary Life”
- Marcus, “The Flame Alphabet”
- Martin, “Break the Skin”
- Merullo, “Fidel’s Last Days”
- Messer, “Grand River and Joy”
- Munro, “Dear Life”
- Munson, “November Criminals”
- Oakeshott, “The Voice of Liberal Learning”
- Obreht, “The Tiger’s Wife”
- Ohmann, “Politics of Letters”
- Ozick, “Foreign Bodies”
- Pelikan, “The Idea of the University”
- Pierpont, “Roth Unbound”
- Pipkin, “Woodsburner”
- Powers, “Suitable Accommodations”
- Prose, “Goldengrove”
- Prose, “Touch”
- Robinson, “Absence of Mind”
- Robinson, “When I Was a Child I Read Books”
- Rosenblum, “Herself When She Is Missing”
- Roth, “Indignation”
- Roth, “The Humbling”
- Roth, “Nemesis”
- Russo, “That Old Cape Magic”
- Ruttenberg, “The Passionate Torah”
- Segal, “The Innocents”
- Shamsie, “Burnt Shadows”
- Sloan, “Jerzy Kosinski”
- Spencer, “Men in Black”
- Spiotta, “Stone Arabia”
- Steiner, “Real Presences”
- Stern, “The Frozen Rabbi”
- Teachout, “Beyond the Boom”
- Toutonghi, “Evel Knievel Days”
- Wagenstein, “Isaac’s Torah”
- Winton, “Breath”
- Wolfe, “Back to Blood”
- Yglesias, “A Happy Marriage”
- Youmans, “A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage”
- Zipperstein, “Rosenfeld’s Lives”
Reconsiderations
- Bellow, “Mr Sammler’s Planet”
- Brinig, “Singermann”
- Brudno, “The Fugitive”
- Buechner, “Godric”
- Cahan, “The Rise of David Levinsky”
- Capote, “In Cold Blood”
- Caspary, “Thicker than Water”
- Cather, “My Ántonia”
- Dick, “The Man in the High Castle”
- Fante, “Full of Life”
- Forbes, “A Mirror for Witches”
- Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”
- Fraser, “Flashman”
- Gellhorn, “Point of No Return”
- Gold, “Jews Without Money”
- Grade, “The Yeshiva”
- Graff, “Literature Against Itself”
- Grant, “When I Lived in Modern Times”
- Jabotinsky, “Samson”
- James, “The Lolita Man”
- James, “The American”
- Johnson, “Middle Passage”
- Lewis, “The Wife of Martin Guerre”
- Lewis, “Against a Darkening Sky”
- Lewisohn, “The Island Within”
- Maugham, “Cakes and Ale”
- Miller, “The Raven and the Whale”
- Morrison, “Beloved”
- Nabokov, “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight”
- Nabokov, “Bend Sinister”
- Nabokov, “Pale Fire”
- O’Connor, “Stealing Home”
- Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”
- Ozick, “The Shawl”
- Portis, “Masters of Atlantis”
- Powers, “Morte D’Urban”
- Prose, “A Changed Man”
- Puzo, “The Godfather”
- Roth, “Call It Sleep”
- Roth, “Goodbye, Columbus”
- Roth, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” I
- Roth, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” II
- Roth, “The Ghost Writer”
- Roth, “The Dying Animal”
- Russo, “Empire Falls”
- Shaara, “The Killer Angels”
- Sheed, “The Hack”
- “The Sopranos”
- Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley”
- Strunk and White, “The Elements of Style”
- Tarr, “The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen”
- Tobenkin, “Witte Arrives”
- Trilling, “The Middle of the Journey”
- Villarreal, “Pocho”
- Wallant, “The Pawnbroker”
- Wharton, “The Age of Innocence”
- Willeford, “The Shark-Infested Custard”
- Williams, “Stoner”
- Williams, “The Hair of Harold Roux”
- Winter, “Hoffman’s Hunger”
- Wolf, “Other Things Being Equal”
- Wright, “Native Son”
- Yezierska, “Bread Givers”
Authors
- Jacques Barzun
- Judith Butler
- Hortense Calisher
- Evan S. Connell Jr.
- J. V. Cunningham
- Peter De Vries
- Denis Dutton
- Joseph Epstein
- William Gay
- Günter Grass
- George Hitchcock
- Christopher Hitchens
- James D. Houston
- Howard Jacobson
- Stephen King
- Irving Kristol
- Charles McCarry
- Roland Merullo
- Wright Morris
- Howard Nemerov
- Richard John Neuhaus
- Anthony Powell
- Francine Prose
- Philip Roth
- J. D. Salinger
- Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
- Wilfrid Sheed
- Lionel Trilling
- John Updike
- Mario Vargas Llosa
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Topics
- Academic interpretation
- Acknowledgments in novels
- Adultery
- Advanced Placement English
- Anthologies
- Baseball and fiction
- Blogging, I: why do it
- Blogging, II: to essay
- Blogging, III: the economics
- Blogging, IV: and freedom
- Cancer, I: etiquette
- Cancer, II: diagnosis
- Censorship
- Conservatives and the university
- Criticism, I: diminishing returns
- Criticism, II: and careerism
- Criticism, III: and credentials
- Criticism, IV: the question
- Criticism, V: ten rules
- Criticism, VI: and moral fashion
- Dialogue, I: chitchat
- Dialogue, II: twittle-twattle
- Difficulty
- Elitism
- The existence of fictional characters
- Experimental writing, I
- Experimental writing, II
- Fiction and truth
- The fox’s apology
- Future of the book, I
- Future of the book, II
- Future of the book, III
- Future of the book, IV
- Future of the book, V
- The game of fiction
- Gay marriage
- Genre
- The gentleman
- Highbrow and lowbrow
- Holocaust, I: and Israel
- Holocaust, II: silence
- Holocaust, III: memory
- Ideology
- Identity, I: and freedom
- Identity, II: and argument
- Identity, III: making it large
- Influence
- Intellectuals and politics
- Irony
- The Left, II: and literature
- The Left, I: and academe
- The Left, III: and culture
- The liberal arts
- Literary evaluation
- The literary fallacy
- Literary fiction
- Literary history
- Literary mashups
- Literature, I: the very idea
- Literature, II: with prefixes
- Literature, III: and status
- Literature, IV: working definition
- Literature, V: the institution
- Literature, VI: and politics
- “Lolita,” I: style
- “Lolita,” II: background
- “Lolita,” III: an interpretation
- The novel of belief
- Plot and thought
- Pulp literature
- Reviewing, I: its ethics
- Reviewing, II: “mean”
- Reviewing, III: “positive”
- Reviewing, IV: and verdicts
- Satire
- The scandal of literary prizes
- The scandal of Philip Roth’s prize
- Self-evidence
- Sex and the novel
- The shlimil
- Seriousness
- Solipsism in interpretation
- The spirit of party in criticism
- Suspense
- Technology and writing
- Terrorism by other means
- The text, I: mucked up
- The text, II: unified
- The text, III: crafted
- The text, IV: experienced
- The text, V: ignored
- Timeliness
- Unreliable narrators
Five Books
Book Lists
- Cancer reading
- Complete annotated guide to 9/11 novels
- Conservative novels
- Depressing novels
- Fifty best novels since 1880
- “50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years”
- Football novels
- Forthcoming fiction, 2010
- Historical novels
- Hollywood novels
- The Holocaust: A reader’s guide
- Labor novels
- MLA rankings of American writers
- One-book authors
- Texas novels
- Veterans’ books
- Year in Jewish books (2010)
- Year in Jewish books (2011)
Symposium
D. G. Myers
A critic and literary historian for nearly a quarter of a century at Texas A&M and Ohio State universities, I am the author of The Elephants Teach and ex-fiction critic for Commentary. I have also written for Jewish Ideas Daily, the New York Times Book Review, the Weekly Standard, Philosophy and Literature, the Sewanee Review, First Things, the Daily Beast, the Barnes & Noble Review, the Journal of the History of Ideas, American Literary History, and other journals. Here is the Commonplace Blog’s statement of principles, such as they are.
Pages
- Home
- American Fiction of the Sixties
- American Jewish Fiction, 1892–1972
- The New Historicism in Literary Study
- Learning to Be Human: Oakeshott on Education
- Why College Sports
- Criticism According to Kenner
- Robert Penn Warren and the History of Criticism
- Politicizing Scholarship: The Iannone Affair
- Invitation to an Argument
- On the Teaching of Literary Theory
- The Mind of the Poet-Critic
- Between Stories: A Memoir of Raymond Carver
- Stanley Elkin’s Jewish Question
- Bad Writing
- Michael Chabon’s Imaginary Jews
- Jean Améry: A Biographical Introduction
- Francine Prose and the Great Tradition
Blog archive
-
▼
2009
(294)
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July
(23)
- A writer’s desk
- The question in criticism
- Careers in criticism
- Criticism’s returns
- America’s leading Catholic novelist
- Five Books of immigrants
- A Happy Marriage
- On vacation
- Self-reference and narcissism
- Thicker than Water
- Five Books of Jewish fiction
- The Middle of the Journey
- New issues, frames, non-existent empires
- Suspended in literary amber
- Ideology as cultural marker
- Baseball novels from top to bottom
- On style
- The Passionate Torah
- Choice and being chosen
- The search for Jewish answers
- Such Jews are not hipsters
- Five Books of the American Revolution
- “You had to suffer it to know”
-
▼
July
(23)
Blogroll
- About Last Night
- Seth Abramson’s Suburban Ecstasies
- Robert Archambeau’s Samizdat Blog
- Arma Virumque (New Criterion)
- Arts and Letters Daily
- Levi Asher’s Literary Kicks
- Mark Athitakis’s American Fiction Notes
- Scott G.F. Bailey’s Six Words for a Hat
- Nigel Beale’s Nota Bene Books
- Graham Beattie
- Between the Lines
- The Book Beast (Daily Beast)
- Blog Critics/Books
- The Book Book
- Books Blog (Guardian)
- Bookforum
- James Bowman
- Broke and Bookish
- Miriam Burstein’s Little Professor
- Edward Byrne’s One Poet’s Notes
- California Literary Review
- Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type
- Bruce Charlton’s Miscellany
- Matthew Cheney’s Mumpsimus
- Anna Clark’s Isak
- Jessa Crispin’s Blog of a Bookslut
- Critical Mass (National Book Critics’ Circle)
- Jenny Davidson’s Light Reading
- Morris Dickstein
- Andy Domonkos’s Lit Submit
- Elberry’s Ghost
- Sarah Emsley
- Scott Esposito’s Conversational Reading
- J. K. Evanczuk’s Lit Drift
- Fantastical Andrew Fox
- John Fraser
- Michael Gilleland’s Laudator Temporis Acti
- Ted Gioia’s New Canon
- Good Letters (Image Journal blog)
- Daniel Green’s Reading Experience
- Janice Harayda’s One-Minute Book Reviews
- Thomas Hart’s Jurassic Rants
- Ron Hogan’s Beatrice
- Seth C. Holler’s Chickens Have No Myths
- Hungry Like the Woolf
- In Other Words (Toronto Globe and Mail)
- Jacket Copy (Los Angeles Times)
- Alan Jacobs
- Richard Katzev’s Marks in the Margin
- Kenyon Review/Blog
- Patrick Kurp’s Anecdotal Evidence
- Language Log
- Richard LeComte’s Life at the Keyboard
- Martin Levin’s Shelf Life
- Literary Commentary (archive)
- The Long Eighteenth
- Los Angeles Review of Books
- Jennifer Lynn’s Nightlight Readings
- Scott McKenzie’s SlushPile.net
- Rohan Maitzen’s Novel Readings
- James Marcus’s House of Mirth
- Angela Meyer’s Literary Minded
- Perry Middlemiss’s Matilda
- John J. Miller
- Laura Miller
- The Millions
- Colleen Mondor’s Chasing Ray
- The Mookse and the Gripes
- The Neglected Books Page
- Kevin Neilson’s Interpolations
- Maud Newton
- Nigeness
- Brian Oard’s Mindful Pleasures
- Sheila O’Malley
- Open Letters Monthly
- Page-Turner (New Yorker)
- Page Views (N.Y. Daily News)
- Richard L. Pangburn’s Little Known Gems
- Paper Cuts (New York Times)
- Paper Tiger (London Telegraph)
- Hershel Parker’s Fragments from a Writing Desk
- Bill Peschel
- Katherine A. Powers’s Reading Life
- Casey Pycior’s Story Is the Cure
- Steven Riddle’s Momentary Taste of Being
- Georgy Riecke
- Helen Rittelmeyer
- Stephen Romei’s Pair of Ragged Claws
- Roberta Rood’s Books to the Ceiling
- M. J. Rose’s Buzz, Balls & Hype
- Mark Sarvas’s Elegant Variation
- Sam Sattler’s Book Chase
- Andrew Seal’s Blographia Literaria
- Jake Seliger’s The Story’s Story
- Ron Silliman
- Ron Slate’s On the Seawall
- Levi Stahl’s Ivebeenreadinglately
- A Striped Armchair
- Megan Sullivan’s Bookdwarf
- Jeff Sypeck’s Quid Plura?
- Tales from the Reading Room
- Three Percent (University of Rochester)
- Mark Thwaite’s Ready Steady Blog
- The TLS Blog
- Bill Vallicella’s Maverick Philosopher
- Rob Velella’s American Literary Blog
- Virginia Quarterly Review/Blog
- Brandon Watson’s Siris
- Frank Wilson’s Books, Inq.
- Ian Wolcott’s New Psalmanazar
- Tony Woodlief’s Sand in the Gears
- Wuthering Expectations
- Marly Youmans’s Palace at 2:00 a.m.
6 comments:
Good choice of blog-reading, if i see aright.
When in doubt, read the dean of book bloggers. That is my motto.
If you want to see more writers' desks, The Guardian has you covered; if you want still more, see Blog Lily's post; if you want mine, see here.
Oh, and nice keyboard.
Jake is being modest. The keyboard is a Unicomp SpaceSaver, which gives the tactile feedback of the old IBM and Apple II-e keyboards. It was his review that led me to it. I have trusted Jake’s opinion ever since.
Jake’s work space is far too neat, by the way. Now I am suspicious of him.
Jake’s work space is far too neat, by the way. Now I am suspicious of him.
If it makes you feel any better, the messiness of my desk ranges from spartan to pandemonium, depending on whether it's covered with RFPs, client background, and what not (from grant writing) or books/outlines (for writing of a more fun sort), or if it's been cleared of said detritus.
Either way, I'm sure there are many, many other reasons not to trust my opinion, which can probably be easily found at the blog linked to above.
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