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The Never-To-Be-Returned-To Perennial Draft
My email client shows eighty-two drafts resident in its capacious folders; my WordPress dashboard shows thirty-seven; and a quick search through various document folders on my desktop machine shows...
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The Curious Irony of Procrastination
Do writers procrastinate more than other people? I wouldn’t know for sure just because I have no idea how much procrastination counts as the norm and what depths practitioners of other trades sink to....
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Bagdikian on the Media’s Corporate Values and Overreliance on Official Sources
I’ve owned Ben Bagdikian‘s The Media Monopoly for some twenty years, and have only just managed to get around to reading it. The edition I own dates back to 1987; its analysis of the growing...
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On A Minor Fast
I went on a little fast today. It lasted seven hours. But before you snicker at my pompous announcement of insignificant renunciation, do consider that I did not give up food or drink for that length...
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It’s Not Like The Good Ol’ Days Here
Writing on this blog has become increasingly onerous. For the first year of this blog (which I put online in November 2011), I was in between book projects, and was able to blog almost every day (I was...
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Learning From Freud: Addiction, Distraction, Schedules
In An Anatomy of an Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted and The Miracle Drug Cocaine, Howard Markel writes: At some point in every addict’s life comes the moment when what started as a...
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Paying Attention To The Muses’ Visits
In The Year of Magical Thinking–a book on which I will write a bit more anon–Joan Didion quotes her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, as saying that having a notebook handy–to write down a thought, an...
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An Amateurish And Embarrassing Oversight
Recently, much to my dismay, I noticed that on page 2 of my book Eye on Cricket: Reflections on the Great Game there are a couple of serious problems. There, the following passages appear: ‘Nostalgia’...
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Barbara Tuchman Contra Hot Takes
Barbara Tuchman kicks off the preface to her Practicing History: Selected Essays (Ballantine Books, New York, 1981) by writing: It is surprising to find, on reviewing one’s past work, which are the...
View ArticleThe Distinct Relief Of Being (Partially) ‘Off-Line’
I’ve been off blogging for a while, and for good reason: I’d been traveling and did not bother to try to stay online during my travels. Interestingly enough, had I bothered to exert myself ever so...
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