On being a new (youthful) artist, composer, musician or writer

I’ve just re-read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, and what came to mind this time was a reflection on what it is to be a young artist. I think it was author John Updike whom I saw quoted once remarking about the abundance of words in his first books. Writers seem to take much [...]

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September 11, 2011  Tags: , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary  No Comments

Riffing on Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, Part 2: Does a Hotdog Have Meat in It?

previously: The next day Tess announced that she was a vegetarian. Which brings me to our trip to the San Francisco Exploratorium and the day I almost lied to her. Tess and I had wandered through half of the science exhibits and demonstrations. She was fascinated, which made me happy as I had dreamed of [...]

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April 20, 2010  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Book Riffs  No Comments

Riffing on Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, Part 1: Little Baby Lamb

At his Vroman’s Bookstore reading, Jonathan Safran Foer posited that children do not come by the eating of meat naturally. That naturally they would have an aversion to it. That we adults must lead children to meat, and ingrain the habit in them – by serving as role model meat eaters, and by serving up [...]

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April 13, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Book Riffs  No Comments

Coming: Foer and animals. But first: last installment on two-bit words

Well, the synchronicity scientists would nod an “I told you so” to the fact that I went to buy a WEB magazine at Vroman’s in Pasadena on Saturday and learned that Jonathan Safran Foer would be there the next day to present his new book, Eating Animals. This after I had recently written my first [...]

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November 9, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Reading Diary  No Comments