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Member: seemingmeaning

CollectionsYour library (284)

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TagsShort Stories (46), Writing Reference (29), Contemporary American Novel (25), Essays (17), American Literature (13), Poetry (7), Non-Fiction (5), World Literature (4), History (4), Classic Literature (3) — see all tags

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GroupsAfrican/African American Literature, Art is Life, Awful Lit., Book reviewers, Books in Books, Booksellers, Brooklynites, Contemporary Fiction, Editors, Researchers, Whatever, English majors! — show all groups , Francophiles, Humor, I (Read About Indie) Rock! Do You?!?, Language, LibraryThing Coffeehouse, Literary Journals (Periodically Appear), Love and Death: for Woody Allen fans, MyPeopleConnection Book Clubs, New Yorkers, Non-Fiction Readers, Short Stories, Single Booklovers, Story-writing Co-Op, The Haunted Soda: A Yarn in 3 Parts by the Literati of LT, Vissi d'Arte: Lorrie Moore fans unite!, What Are You Reading Now?, Writer-readers

Favorite authorsJames Baldwin, Peter Cameron, Aime Cesaire, Andrei Codrescu, Mary Gaitskill, bell hooks, Edward P. Jones, Kenneth Koch, Lewis H. Lapham, Lorrie Moore, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, Ishmael Reed, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Gilbert Sorrentino, Mark Twain, Brenda Ueland, David Foster Wallace, Edith Wharton (Shared favorites)

About meAs Joan Didion once said, "we tell ourselves [and read] stories in order to live." That said, I wholeheartedly believe in Didion's mantra and try to follow it by reading and writing. So where shall I start? A Haitian-American bookseller/events coordinator who--as cliche as it sounds-- loves the written word. I received two slim pieces of paper called a "B.A." in English (Literature/Writing and Culture concentrations), History (European History concentration) and a minor in French Literature at Louisiana State University; native New Yorker/Brooklyn resident, and Louisiana/Florida transplant; music fanatic and former college-radio disc jockey where I conducted interviews with writers and poets involved with the "Jack Kerouac Writers-In-Residence" project in Orlando, Florida. Short stories and various non-fiction writing are generally considered my bread and butter. I adore writers who employ a miraculous use of language, verbal wordplay (to name a few, non-sequitors, Tom Swifties, Anagrams, Rhymes, Mnemonics, Tongue Twisters, and Palindromes) and humor, while exposing truth and emotion in such an unblinking fashion. I recently joined PEN American Center as an associate member and am still pondering whether a MFA in Fiction is worth the time and effort to continue my writing hunger. Well I suppose I do find value in getting the MFA considering I am "currently" spending time studying for the GRE's. File Under: B-O-R-I-N-G

"As grace and nature have been separated, so imagination and reason have been separated, and this always means an end to art. The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees. For him, to be reasonable is to find, in the object, in the situation, in the sequence, the spirit which makes it itself."

--Flannery O'Connor, "The Nature and Aim of Fiction."

"It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees--this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward."

--Anton Chekhov

"As a fiction writer I believe that most of what is good and useful and helpful and beautiful in the world comes from an imagination that is being vigorously used rather than one that is being used sparingly, or dimly, or not at all. A mind is a book – and a book that remains closed is a doorstop. To imagine – which means to step away slightly from what is strictly one's own point of view – is at the heart of tolerance if not understanding, sympathy if not actual explicit generosity. And it is the reason why we are today living in the most tolerant times Americans have yet lived in – [Clinton was, at that time President, and his wife quite tolerantly had not even attempted to shoot him] – We have imagined others – their stories, their predicaments, their fantastically difficult decisions, their bad and totally unfair luck. This imagining away from what is familiar and self-interested enlarges and enriches us all – though that may be the least of it. It is also an act of charity, and makes the world safer for someone else – not only spiritually safer but physically safer – a life saved. When you have done that – when you have saved a life in one of the various ways a life can be saved – you have done something extraordinary."

--Lorrie Moore, speaking at St. Lawrence University's 2004 Commencement Address.

"How can it be described? How can any of it be described? The trip and the story of the trip are two different things. The narrator is the one who has stayed home, but then, afterward, presses her mouth upon the traveler’s mouth, in order to make the mouth work, to make the mouth say, say, say. One cannot go to a place and speak of it; one cannot both see and say, not really. One can go, and upon returning make a lot of hand motions and indications with the arms. The mouth itself, working at the speed of light, at the eye’s instructions, is necessarily struck still; so fast, so much to report, it hangs open and dumb as a gutted bell. All that unsayable life! That’s where the narrator comes in. The narrator comes with her kisses and mimicry and tidying up. The narrator comes and makes a slow, fake song of the mouth’s eager devastation."

--Lorrie Moore "People Like That Are The Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk"

"Literature holds the mechanisms of repair. Literature has the capacity to ameliorate our society's ills...Literature stanches that wasteful draining away of conscience and memory. Literature experiences us as multidimensional persons. Literature deals with consequences."

--Toni Morrison

"Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.”
–Franz Kafka to Oskar Pollak, January 27, 1904

"I read," I say. "I study and read. I bet I've read everything you read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with all due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk."

--David Foster Wallace "Infinite Jest"

"When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence."

--Mark Twain

As an English major I should take offense, but...

Guy: So, what's your major?
Girl: English.
Guy: Really? Wow, you're really fuckable for an English major.
Girl: Uh, thanks...

--linden ave., also lola (from "overheard at Cornell")

"Art is there to challenge our assumptions and our organizing principles."

--Junot Diaz

About my libraryThe library collection encompasses material from home and my current job over the past 10 years. Ranging from different styles and periods (American Literature--fiction, poetry, and non-fiction; reference books; primary and secondary historical sources, critical and literary theory etc). I am slowly adding books here and there, but it's coming along.

CURRENT READS

MAGAZINE AND LITERARY JOURNALS:
The Paris Review (various editions)
The New York Review of Books
The New Yorker
The New York Times Book Review
Poets and Writers
Harper's (personal favorite)
Print


BOOKS:
Saul Bellow: "The Adventures of Augie March"
Jean Thompson: "Who Do You Love?"
Lorraine Hansberry: "To be Gifted, Proud, and Black."
Anthony Bourdain: "Kitchen Confidential"

PAST AUTHOR READINGS AND LECTURES:

Andrei Codrescu (Bowery Poetry Club)

Cynthia Carr (B&N)

Yves Bonnefoy (Louisiana State University)

Natasha Trethewey (Louisiana State University)

Billy Collins (Louisiana State University)

Kwame Anthony Appiah (B&N)

Paul Auster and Siri Hurvstedt (192 Books)

Rob Walker (Mo Pitkin's)

Mary Gaitskill (192 Books)

Anya Kamenetz (B&N)

bell hooks (Ocala Community College)

Sarah Vowell (B&N)

Patti Smith (Great Hall at Cooper Union)

Francine Prose (McNally Robinson)

Gay Talese (Strand)

T.C. Boyle (B&N)

Greil Marcus and Kim Gordon (CUNY Graduate
Center)

W.S. Merwin/Joan Didion (CUNY Graduate Center)

Selected writers and artists from downtown scene:
Eric Bognosian, Michael Musto, et al. (B&N)

Live tape feeding (from London) of Margaret Atwood
(McNally Robinson)

Jennifer Gilmore (Coliseum Books--my former place of
employment)

Lynne Truss (Coliseum Books)

Colson Whitehead/Pete Morrill/Jennifer Egan
(Brooklyn Courthouse--Brooklyn Book Festival)

Olympia Vernon and Juan Williams (Louisiana Book
Festival)

Rodrigo Fresán, Etgar Keret, Yiyun Li, Helen
Oyeyemi, Matthew Ritchie, Salman Rushdie, Dubravka
Ugresi (The Believer Nighttime Event for PEN
World Voices Festival 2006)

Edwidge Danticat (St. John's University)

Rick Moody, Colin Channer, Carl Hancock Rux, and
Wesley Stance (Brooklyn Book Festival)

Shari Goldhagen, Nicole Bokat, Gloria Nayman
(Mercball-October)

Rachel Sherman (KGB Bar)

Lynne Tillman (New York University)

Michael Thomas (Book Court. Hosted guest reading)

William T. Vollmann (B&N)--not to mention his kind
invitation (with other readers) for drinks in
Chelsea.

Ben Hoffman, Laura Mosen, and Lauren Mechfield
(Book Court: And yours truly hosted the event)

Noah Lukeman (Book Court)

Lorrie Moore (Hofstra University)

Niccolò Ammaniti, John Hodgman, Isabel Hoving,
Uzodinma Iweala, Miranda July, Yasmina Khadra; and
Eric Bogosian (The Believer Nighttime Event for PEN
World Voices Festival 2007)-New School for Social
Research

Dave Eggers (brief conversation at the post-Believer
nighttime event)

Granta Reading with Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Safran
Foer, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Jess
Row, Karen Russell and John Wray with Matt Weiland
(Hosted and facilitated Q&A session at Book Court)

Gabriel Cohen (Hosted and facilitated Q&A session at
Book Court)

Lorrie Moore and Helen Simpson (B&N)

Miranda July (Paula Cooper Gallery, sponsored by 192
Books)

Peter Charles Melman (Book Court)

A.M. Homes (Book Court)

Carol Muske-Dukes (Strand)

Mary Gordon (B&N)

Junot Diaz (B&N)

Carol Muske-Dukes (hosted event at Book Court)

Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Holly Hughes, Jami Attenberg,
and Ben Karlin (hosted event at Book Court)

Adrian Tomine (hosted book signing/q&a session at
Book Court)

John Ashbery (192 Books)

Steven Bach (NYU)

Neal Gabler (HBO)

Anthony Bourdain (B&N)



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Real nameGuy J. Anglade

LocationBrooklyn, NY

Emailseemingmeaninggmail.com

Account typepublic, paid

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URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/seemingmeaning (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/seemingmeaning (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (23), Awards (109), Characters (544), Places (144)

Member sinceMar 16, 2006