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The classics are weird
Last Friday’s newsletter begins:
My favorite thing about reading “the classics” is that they’re almost always weirder than you think they are. For example: within 50 pages of War and Peace, a bunch of drunks tie a policeman to a bear and throw them in the river. (I try to read a big book every summer, so I figured why not read one of the biggest?)
With backup from Italo Calvino’s Why Read The Classics:
“Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them…”
Read more: “The classics are weird.”
Two recent conversations
I had two really nice conversations recently that I thought were worth sharing:
1. I talked to cartoonist Jason Chatfeld about attention, showing up, comedy, and how to keep going.
What started as a conversation about creative routines turned into a masterclass on attention management, the importance of play, and why treating your art like a comedy might be the secret to actually surviving as a creative person.
2. I talked to Marcus Goodyear and Camille Hall-Ortega of The Echoes Podcast about what it means to create something beautiful in the age of AI.
An excerpt that seemed to resonate with people:
View this post on Instagram
You can listen to our entire conversation here.
A peek inside my pocket notebook
My pocket notebook is my least-formal of my 4 notebooks, so it usually turns out to be my favorite and most surprising notebook to flip through. Here’s a peek inside my latest.
Typewriter interview with Sarah Manguso
After a brief hiatus, the typewriter interviews are back! The latest is a great one with writer Sarah Manguso.
Writing shouldn’t be easier
Here’s a page from my diary that I put at the top of today’s newsletter: “Making it easier.”
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