The artist who uses the same energy and genius that Homer and Isaiah had will find that he not only lives in the same palace of art as Homer and Isaiah, but lives in it at the same time.
-Northrop Frye, quoted by Mark Edmundson, here.
• My book
The artist who uses the same energy and genius that Homer and Isaiah had will find that he not only lives in the same palace of art as Homer and Isaiah, but lives in it at the same time.
-Northrop Frye, quoted by Mark Edmundson, here.
Roast chicken tonight, done with my usual spatchcockery, alongside this farro with roasted cauliflower. Except I couldn’t find farro for less than $8.95, nor the similar (but cheaper) spelt berries, so I used wheat berries. Two things to remember for next time:
1) Probably cook the wheat berries (or whatever) in a bigger pot. I used our smallest, and even after an hour and a half, I don’t think they were as cooked as they should have been.
2) Skip the dressing in the linked recipe and just use your standard vinaigrette. I found the sesame oil and mustard off-putting together.
Otherwise, not a bad combination. I have, somewhat overnight, become a cauliflower eater.
The chicken went into the oven with nothing more than salt and pepper. No oil, no garlic, no herbs. It was delicious.
I’ll be honest. I think of myself as a fiction writer. I’m real interested in fiction, and all elements of fiction. Fiction’s more important to me. So I’m also I think more scared and tense about fiction, more worried about my stuff, more worried about whether I’m any good or not, or I’m on the wrong track or not.
Whereas the thing that was fun about a lot of the nonfiction is, you know, it’s not that I didn’t care, but it was just mostly like, yeah, I’ll try this. I’m not an expert at it. I don’t pretend to be. It’s not particularly important to me whether the magazine, you know, even takes the thing I do or not. And so it was just more, I guess the nonfiction seems a lot more like play. For me.
-David Foster Wallace, “I’m Not a Journalist, and I Don’t Pretend to Be One”
One time Roethke danced around the room saying, “I’m the best god-damned poet in the USA!”
-Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist, 187.
And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme—
When Nature in her nakedness
Defeats us every time?You’ve got to admit that’s good. That’s Kipling. Did you hear what he did? “When Nature in her nakedness defeats us every time.” Do you hear how he just drills that line right through your heart muscle? The “nay” of Nature and the “nay” of nakedness just push right through and screw you to the back of your chair.
-Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist, 13.
