Zyzzyva: also a type of weevil, as your basic Trader Joe’s grocery bagger knows.
Who knew? Epilepsy and transcendence (via).
Nabakov: druggie, loony or just plain novelist?
NaNoWriMo: nay, nay, eh, eh and yea.
How about that Mark Z. Danielweski on the Bat Segundo Show? Wish I could listen to it on a transistor radio.
Lots to love in this essay on Joan Didion and the crazy-bad introduction to a new collection of her nonfiction. Here’s a bit:
There was a long line for the book signing. We were instructed to keep it brief, as Ms. Didion was exhausted. By the time my turn came, I felt like Wayne and Garth meeting Aerosmith. I mumbled something incoherent about what her work meant to me. She just looked at me like, yeah, yeah, heard it all before.
i really fucking hate it when people glamourize temporal lobe epilepsy. yes i’m a genius, and yes i get lost in my mind, but no it’s not fucking cool. i have to be careful all the time, and no one understands anything about it. and yes i am electrically sensitive, and yes i am bipolar -all things tied to temporal lobe epilepsy. and yes most doctors don’t know the first thing about it. and yes they think i’m on drugs (which i don’t cuz it would fuck up my life really bag). and yes doctors want to turn me into a vegetable, just to contain me. not to really treat me.
Didn’t mean to offend — I’m just fascinated by how our brains work, and work differently from one another. Richard Powers’ new book The Echo Maker spends a lot of time on this (altho not re: epilepsy), and it’s an amazing, thoughtful novel.
Well, I liked the reference to epilepsy – not that it glamorized anything, because it didn’t, but because it is difficult for me to imagine what useful or intense might come from an admittedly not-fucking-cool experience.
Thx for the reference to the MZD interview — do you have a blog post of your response to HoL anywhere?
sorry i get senstive about this stuff, i was more directing my anger towards the photograph on the blog in the “via” link. it just reminded me of the transcendentalism in neo-hippie stuff, and that crap makes me kind of angry when i see tripping and my condition meshed for fashion.
Hy-
Just wanted to say thanks for the kind words about the Joan Didion essay.
Thanks!
Re epilpesy….one of my siblings is epileptic, and there’s no question it’s a bitch. But debunking the “myth” of seizures woud help, as there are lots of people who are clueless about it….
BK