"Reading is, . . . from its first moments, an inevitable process of forgetting. Even as I read, I start to forget what I have read, and this process is unavoidable. It extends to the point where it's as though I haven't read the book at all, so that in effect I find myself rejoining the ranks of non-readers, where I should no doubt have remained in the first place. "

"At this point, saying we have read a book becomes essentially a process of metonymy. When it comes to books, we never read more than a portion of greater or lesser length, and that portion is, in the longer or shorter term, condemned to disappear."

from How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by Pierre Bayard (tr. Jeffrey Mehlman), from the chapter "Books You Have Forgotten"

Amusing Yahoo Headline

Obama reassures Canada on trade /Maple cookies for daughters

Poem

http://www.slate.com/id/2101150/sidebar/2101284/ent/2101283/

"All of the Words on a Bottle of Rolling Rock Beer in a Different Order"
by Demetri Martin

Boating

- Flaubert's advice to Guy de Maupassant, when Maupassant was studying with Flaubert, learning to write:

You must -- do you hear me, young man? -- you must work harder. Too many whores! Too much boating! Too much exercise! Yes, that's right: a civilized man does not require as much locomotion as doctors would have us believe.

from review of "Afloat" written by Graham Robb in the NY Review of Books, Feb. 26, 2009.

Zadie Smith on equivocal, multivocal lives, with special reference to herself and Obama:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22334

Harvey's Pastrami

Harvey's Pastrami, for years known for "World's Largest Pastrami," has a nice sign in the window:

"Enjoy Our Spicy Galore!"

Somehow changes my picture of Harvey.

Norman Mailer's Review of "The Old Man and The Sea"

"I thought it was good, and would have been better if it hadn't been so full of shit."


-- from a letter to Lillian Ross, Sept. 2, 1952, published in The New York Review of Books, Feb. 12, 2009.