My CommonPlace

FICTION vs. NON-FICTION

thenaturalist — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:28:28 +0000

Vidia Naipaul uses a typewriter to write fiction and hand-writing to write non-fiction. (“Along Publisher’s Row,” Authors Guild Bulletin, Spring 2011)

TIME (IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH)

thenaturalist — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:22:11 +0000

Elisabeth Tova Bailey, who began working on a book entitled The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating during a year she spent confined to her bed by a severe chronic illness, says: “Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties. It was all I could do to get through each moment, and each moment felt like an endless hour, yet days slipped silently past. Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as if time itself is starving, and each day is swallowed whole, leaving no crumbs, no memory, no trace at all.”

JHUMPA LAHIRI ON HOME

thenaturalist — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 20:49:17 +0000

Pulitzer Prize winning author, Jhumpa Lahiri, felt somewhat displaced growing up in America the child of immigrant parents. Did she belong to India or America? Where was her home? She says, “When I became a writer my desk became home; there was no need for another.”

GANDHI ON EARTH, MAN, NEED, AND GREED

thenaturalist — Sun, 15 May 2011 20:03:04 +0000

Gandhi said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for every man’s greed.”

MONTAIGNE ON FRIENDS AND CRITICS

thenaturalist — Fri, 06 May 2011 19:01:08 +0000

On September 13, 1592, Michel de Montaigne died near Bordeaux, France. The son of a wealthy Catholic landowner and a mother of Spanish-Jewish descent, he was allowed to hear and speak only Latin until he was six years old. After a brief career in law and politics, he retired to the family chateau and devoted himself to a life of reflection and writing. In 1580, he invented a whole new literary form with his historic “Essays” (in French “Essais”), a collection of literary reflections on innumerable topics. Montaigne wrote wisely on many subjects, but never more than when he discussed the value of having friends with whom we may test our ideas and opinions.

He expressed the thought in a neat metaphorical way: “It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.” He also offered a remarkable thought on the giving and the receiving of candid feedback: “We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake t wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.”

ROBERT FROST ON POEMS

thenaturalist — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:15:13 +0000

Robert Frost said that a poem “begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a love of sickness. It is never a thought to begin with.”

JOHN UPDIKE ON SHORT STORIES

thenaturalist — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:16:03 +0000

In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories of 1984, John Updike wrote, “I want stories to startle and engage me within the first few sentences, and in their middle to widen or deepen my knowledge of human activity, and to end by giving me a sensation of a completed statement.”

WRITING AND THINKING

thenaturalist — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:30:07 +0000

David McCullough says, “To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.” That sounds good to me.

THOMAS JEFFERSON ON NEWSPAPERS

thenaturalist — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:16:12 +0000

Thomas Jefferson said — or maybe wrote? — “I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.” I’m beginning to think maybe I should do the same….

BUDDHA ON WORK

thenaturalist — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:12:29 +0000

Buddha says, “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” I wish someone had told me this a long time ago….