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After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication. ↗
En el muro de Facebook hay una opción que te permite añadir "Me gusta" al comentario o la foto de otro internauta. El pictograma es una mano cerrada con el pulgar hacia arriba. También ofrece la posibilidad, en caso de arrepentimiento, de sustituirlo por un "Ya no me gusta". Eso es todo. La red social de Zuckerberg no admite la alternativa de matizar esa adhesión o ese arrepentimiento con algún estado intermedio, quizá titubeante o más gaseoso. Sólo acepta la rotundidad de un sí o un no, del blanco o el negro, con el pulgar hacia arriba o hacia abajo, sin medias tintas. La duda ha sido expulsada de esta arcadia digital y condenada a vagar por el desierto de territorios más lejanos y lentos, es decir, más literarios [...] Ahora bien, pensar consiste justamente en lo contrario. Pensar implica el compromiso radical de ir un paso más allá del "Me gusta" o "No me gusta", de suspender la fase infantil de la imposición caprichosa de nuestros antojos. Aquí no sirve eso tan socorrido del "Porque lo digo yo" y el puñetazo en la mesa. Hay que razonar, justificar, argumentar con palabras de peso nuestro amor, nuestro rechazo, lo cual es complicado e incómodo, ya que puedes equivocarte o quedar en ridículo. O puedes caer en la paradoja de aquel personaje de Monterroso, un escritor cuya esposa, tras desvelar los hábitos de trabajo de él, concluía: «Cuando no se le ocurre nada escribe pensamientos». ↗
Barbara [Stanwyck] and I were together for four years. What ultimately broke it up was the fact that it couldn't go anywhere—it was a classic backstreet romance. I was going on location to make movies, she was going on location to make movies, and there was no chance of a marriage in that place and time, so it was bound to run out of steam. She finally sat me down and told me that it was too difficult for her. She loved me, but. . . . I couldn't argue with her reasoning. There was simply no way we could have been married at that time. I would have always been Mr. Stanwyck, and we both knew it. And that's how it came to an end. She was an enormous influence in my life, and still is. I remain immensely grateful. I gave her things, nice things, such as a four-leaf clover necklace made out of platinum and diamonds, a piece of jewelry she always set special store by. But the things I gave her were dwarfed by the things she gave me. If I had to limit it to just one thing, I would say she gave me self-esteem. To have a woman of her beauty and accomplishment see value in me and give herself totally to me couldn't help but have a powerful impact on my psyche. Barbara was the first savior in my life. More concretely, she gave me values I never had before. I've mentioned that she gave me a love of reading, but she also taught me to appreciate art. I still have two landscapes she gave me, one of San Francisco, the other of Paris. Without her, there's no doubt in my mind I would have gone in a different direction, and not a better one. For one thing, I would have spent more time with my contemporaries, and frankly, none of my contemporaries were in Barbara's league. I always kept in touch with Barbara. I don't know who the men in her life were, although I'm sure they existed. I know she had escorts, although I assumed most of them were gay. ↗
#art
I make so many plans but fail at follow-through. Gemini mind once a mat for you to wipe your feet. I’d beg for it. I’d plead 'Here! I’m here waiting for you to be the one. Take my heart, my life, my air: rip them to shreds and hand them back.No need to worry. I have enough superglue and tears to keep me busy for months... ↗
A brick could be used as brain filler for the political mind, just in case one of our elected officials needs a brain transplant to try to boost their intellectual capabilities. ↗
#brick-and-blanket-iq-test #brick-and-blanket-responses #brick-and-blanket-test #brick-and-blanket-uses #funny
Beyond the speculative and often fraudulent froth that characterizes much of neoliberal financial manipulation, there lies a deeper process that entails the springing of ‘the debt trap’ as a primary means of accumulation by dispossession. Crisis creation, management, and manipulation on the world stage has evolved into the fine art of deliberative redistribution of wealth from poor countries to the rich. I documented the impact of Volcker’s interest rate increase on Mexico earlier. While proclaiming its role as a noble leader organizing ‘bail-outs’ to keep global capital accumulation on track, the US paved the way to pillage the Mexican economy. This was what the US Treasury–Wall Street–IMF complex became expert at doing everywhere. Greenspan at the Federal Reserve deployed the same Volcker tactic several times in the 1990s. Debt crises in individual countries, uncommon during the 1960s, became very frequent during the 1980s and 1990s. Hardly any developing country remained untouched, and in some cases, as in Latin America, such crises became endemic. These debt crises were orchestrated, managed, and controlled both to rationalize the system and to redistribute assets. Since 1980, it has been calculated, ‘over fifty Marshall Plans (over $4.6 trillion) have been sent by the peoples at the Periphery to their creditors in the Center’. ‘What a peculiar world’, sighs Stiglitz, ‘in which the poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest. ↗
I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort. From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am. We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know. ↗
I’m not your boyfriend!” I snapped, trying to gently move her hands away from my body. “How can you say that?” Sara asked in horror. “It’s shockingly effortless,” I replied. “My vocal chords vibrate, and my mouth and tongue articulate. I can even do it without thinking.” I had to remind myself to stay calm, and sarcasm was the best way to do that. “When are you going to give me a key to your house so I don’t have to knock like some guest?” Sara asked, coming at me again. I backed away. “How about never? Is never good for you?” Sara, undeterred, said, “You’re the reason I go to therapy on Fridays.” “The plot thickens!” Gabby exclaimed for comedic relief. ↗
