Navigation

Archive | Book Matters

Scrap-Iron Louisa

November 29, 2013 in Book Matters, Feminist Matters, Quoth the Raving, Sabboytical

Louisa May Alcott’s birthday should be another national holiday—one for independent-minded girls everywhere. Certainly I have no idea of who I’d be without Little Women to straighten my spine and warm my heart through every stage of my life. As a child I felt special knowing she’d lived within 20 miles of my house, and ever since I’ve looked to both her life and work as an example of what can be accomplished through the marriage of hard work and imagination. These days, the phrase of hers that resonates with me most is this: “I’d rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.” Happy birthday, Louisa May.

A Tiny Swan Song for Doris Lessing, 94

November 17, 2013 in Book Matters, Feminist Matters, Quoth the Raving

Doris Lessing died this morning at such a good, old age that I can hardly complain about her departure. But she did go just as I’d just been thinking about how much she’d given us and how little we’d noticed it lately. She said many wonderful, incisive things that opened our eyes, minds, hearts and crystallized a lot of realities with which we’d only been murkily familiar. The quote I always kept taped somewhere near me was this: “A simple grateful thought turned heavenward is the most perfect prayer.”

The Wes Anderson Collocation

October 19, 2013 in Book Matters, Film Matters

My colleague Matt Zoller Seitz wrote The Wes Anderson Collection, a terrifically detailed tome about the terrifically detailed director Wes Anderson. At New York City’s Strand Bookstore, I moderated a panel about the book with Seitz (pictured left) and The New Yorker’s Richard Brody. And his beard.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy