Quonset Hut

MY GRANDMOTHER AKA “PRINCESS LEIA OF DEPERE...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:16:00 -0400

MY GRANDMOTHER AKA “PRINCESS LEIA OF DEPERE (WI)”

Those boys (and that girl) are so sad they grew up before lightsabers.

An Etiquette Tip From Emily Post: The FAA Edition

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 22:14:04 -0400

An Etiquette Tip From Emily Post: The FAA Edition

OLD TIMEY LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:46:08 -0400

OLD TIMEY LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE

WHAT BOOKS DREAM WHEN THEY DREAM Of being unfairly accused and...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:27:14 -0400

WHAT BOOKS DREAM WHEN THEY DREAM

Of being unfairly accused and incarcerated by the Dewey Decimal System.

THIS IS THE HEMINGWAY STYLE BOOK From which he cribbed the...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:16:43 -0400

THIS IS THE HEMINGWAY STYLE BOOK

From which he cribbed the following journalistic Kansas City Star guidelines for writing and dressing:

- understatement, objectivity, absence of sentimentality and an instructive narrator wearing khaki

- few adjectives and adverbs, limited usually to “khaki” or khakily”

- repetition of single words and phrases, incremental repetition (and layering) of khaki items—safari jacket, hat, socks

AMANDA DAVIS Ten years ago today, writer Amanda Davis died in an...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:53:56 -0400

AMANDA DAVIS

Ten years ago today, writer Amanda Davis died in an airplane accident. If you were not lucky enough to know her, you can read about her here. She is missed and mourned right now as hard as she was on March 14, 2003, and during the weeks and months and years that followed. To the sky that took her, please send news. She is still receiving.

THE BELIEVER MAGAZINE is TEN YEARS OLD! And its editors are no...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:36:00 -0500

THE BELIEVER MAGAZINE is TEN YEARS OLD!

And its editors are no longer thirteen. Ed Park and Sheila Heti and Nick Hornby and others will be wearing matching Fair Isle sweaters at the anniversary party tonight at Le Poisson Rouge.

LETTER TO MY DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBOR Hello! This is Heidi from apartment 34. I was wondering, do you...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:15:17 -0500

LETTER TO MY DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBOR

Hello! This is Heidi from apartment 34. I was wondering, do you have a cat and if so, do you so totally fail to change its litter box that the smell makes me feel like I live in your apartment, not mine? Or maybe did you die a long time ago? Are you maybe just dead in your apartment? To be fair to you, I’ve always had a vivid sense of smell. I can remember the smells of every one of my boyfriends—one smelled of flan, one of wool sweaters removed in fall from the wooden drawers in which they’d spent the summer, one of Pears soap, one of paisley (imagine what a paisley would smell like—like a father, I guess), one of puffed rice, one of coffee that’s percolated upward through the top of a skull. I once had a confused relationship with a smoker. I kept trying to get a sexual read off of him, but he just smelled like smoke. I deemed him unknowable and broke up with him. I wondered how anyone could fall in love with or want to fuck a smoker. It would be like falling in love with a bar or a restaurant (before the smoking ban) or with the traffic island outside of JFK. And who can eat in a restaurant that smells of bleach? There’s a popular restaurant near my house that stinks like a public swimming pool. I take my food to go. My son also has a strong sense of smell. He notices when I use a different body cream. He says, “you don’t smell like my mom.” This is what the smell of your apartment makes me want to say to my apartment—you don’t smell like my home. This doesn’t smell like my life.

SCOOPED AGAIN WTF?

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:31:12 -0500

SCOOPED AGAIN

WTF?

2013 FASHION INTENTIONS To be poorly pixelated.

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:01:00 -0500

2013 FASHION INTENTIONS

To be poorly pixelated.

THE 25th OF JANUARY Hard lessons are learned at George Saunders...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 11:56:12 -0500

THE 25th OF JANUARY

Hard lessons are learned at George Saunders Elementary School.

WARNING: PAPER IS DANGEROUS The card catalog is a threat to...

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 12:00:59 -0500

WARNING: PAPER IS DANGEROUS

The card catalog is a threat to truth and relevance! It is a constantly intensifying, present-tense menace. It becomes. It does this every day.

TODAY’S JOURNAL ENTRY Tired Today it was so incredibly...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:42:48 -0500

TODAY’S JOURNAL ENTRY

Tired

Today it was so incredibly hard to empty the dryer’s lint trap. Wasn’t it enough that I’d washed the clothes, and that I’d moved these clothes to the dryer? Did I really have expend those extra two seconds of energy to clean the lint trap? I just couldn’t do it. I did it. Afterward I didn’t think, “that was no big deal, next time I should just shut up and clean the lint trap.” Instead I thought: that nearly put me over the edge.

Letter To a Young Student

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:46:07 -0500

Dear _______,

Remember me? We had a writing workshop together. Also a lecture. But maybe you didn’t clock me because there were so many people in that room, and besides I was only the professor. I always wanted to read your stories, but this desire seemed inappropriate, especially in a graduate creative writing setting. Your clear and generally what one would call “good” skin suggested to me that you would probably be capable of clarity and goodness in other regions of your self, and by goodness I don’t mean moral goodness, I mean goodness like “good writer” goodness, i.e. you have a good sense of how good is not usually “good,” at least not in the way most people understand good, for example when they’re referring to skin. In skin terms, I imagined your writing would be the equivalent of a funny (at first) face rash, if that doesn’t sound like an insult, because I don’t intend it like that. I am a pretty huge fan of face rashes, from an artistic standpoint, I mean. I think every story should have a face rash. And then after a while maybe that face rash gets picked at, you know, with a fingernail, the metaphoric literary fingernail. And pretty soon there are holes in the rash, deep holes, in fact the holes are in the face that has the rash, not just the rash itself, and through those holes you can see…a universe. Which might be small and sad and rashy. This universe. Or it might be sunny and purportedly happy, though the brightness, after a while, can sear your optic nerve, you can actually smell you optic nerve heating up the way people who have Lasik surgery report being able to smell the horror of their own healing. Or maybe it’s just sunny back there, no serious damage save the ultraviolet wear-and-tear of days. Just like with advent calendars, you just never know until you open that paper door (usually with a fingernail, a real one). There might be a candy cane behind it. Or there might just be another stupid bell. Regardless, the bell will mean something, and the candy cane will mean something, and the door will mean something, and none of it will have anything to do with god. S/he doesn’t call the shots in this universe. You do.

All my best,

Heidi Julavits

DOLLY’S PARADOX “I’ve written some of my...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:45:00 -0500

DOLLY’S PARADOX

“I’ve written some of my saddest songs when I’ve been my happiest.”

STILL LIFE WITH HEADBAND T-Minus 66 hours until the end of the...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 23:58:31 -0500

STILL LIFE WITH HEADBAND

T-Minus 66 hours until the end of the semester.

(The Blair Waldorfian leopard hair gear only makes appearances during shower-less times.)

GOD’S EYES IN ARKANSAS They were watching me. And it felt...

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 10:11:11 -0500

GOD’S EYES IN ARKANSAS

They were watching me. And it felt good.

I DIDN’T NEED A MIRACLE A backstage pass given to me by my...

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 10:06:00 -0500

I DIDN’T NEED A MIRACLE

A backstage pass given to me by my college roommate’s cousin, also my boss at the Hard Rock cafe (where I worked for a summer as a merch waitress), because this cousin/boss was dating Bob Weir at the time. Nick Paumgarten’s insanely amazing Grateful Dead piece in The New Yorker made me remember my days as a Faux Head.

MY THANKSGIVING PLATE READING You will have many dilemmas along...

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 10:17:26 -0500

MY THANKSGIVING PLATE READING

You will have many dilemmas along your path in life which relate to work versus home or family. You are known as The Helper in work and are emotionally sensitive and psychic. Your lucky days of the week Monday, Thursday, Sunday.

Famous people with the same Thanksgiving plate include Miro, Adolph Hitler, Jessica Lange and Carmen Electra.

IF ROMNEY WERE AN OLD HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 09:10:10 -0500

IF ROMNEY WERE AN OLD HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN