The Call Up

The best of the internet as curated by me. Put me in coach.

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December 2, 2012 1:00 pm
Currently

Currently

January 27, 2012 9:49 am
"Didion is the writer who expressed most eloquently the eternal-girl impulse, the one that follows us into adulthood: the desire to retreat to our room, to close the door, to spend some time alone with our thoughts and our feelings. She understood that the old governor’s mansion in Sacramento was superior to the Reagans’ giant tract house because it had big, airy bedrooms, “and one can imagine reading in one of them, or writing a book, or closing the door and crying until dinner.” She loved Alcatraz Island not only for the flowers and the view, but because she is a person who likes a moat."

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A great piece about Didion.  I realized she’s the literary equivalent of a Lisa Cholodenko film, where the clothes and surroundings are as much a part of the psyche as the relationships.  Or maybe Lisa Cholodenko is the film equivalent of a Joan Didion book, either way.

(Source: The Atlantic)

December 18, 2011 5:57 pm
"I find, on the other hand, somewhat to my surprise, that I actively like physical therapy…I am impressed by the strength and general tone of the other patients who turn up during the same hour…I wonder how many appointments it will take to reach the apparently effortless control already achieved by my fellow patients. Only during my third week of physical therapy do I learn that these particular fellow patients are in fact the New York Yankees, loosening up between game days."

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Joan Didion
October 28, 2011 1:22 pm

Mesmerizing.  The Year of Magical Thinking was one of those books that caught me completely off guard.  I was going along reading it, kind of engrossed, but feeling like it was very surface-y, like someone was giving you a beautiful description of the brushstrokes on a canvas without giving a sense of the painting.  But then, at the end, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, it was devastating.  Something about this woman…the prose is so tense and tight, you don’t realize how much it reveals and draws you in.  Might have to read this next one.