Saturday, December 31, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt ten)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

Women enjoy a different history of madness. From witchcraft to hysteria we’re just bad news. We know that women were condemned as witches because they were mentally unstable but no one has considered the numbers—even few as they might be—of women who were stoned to death for being bright. That I havent wound up chained to a cellar wall or burned at the stake is not a testament to our ascending civility but to our ascending skepticism. If we still believed in witches we’d still be burning them. Hooknosed crones strapped into the electric chair. No one has ever seemed to comment that the stereotypical witch is meant to appear Jewish. I guess the skepticism is okay. If you can stomach what goes with it. I’m happy to be treated well but I know that it’s an uncertain business. When this world which reason has created is carried off at last it will take reason with it. And it will be a long time coming back. What happened to our turns?



Friday, December 30, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt nine)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

So what might he say? For instance?

He might say that milk is the beverage of choice among all right-thinking nightfolk. Or he would say that if anything were true wouldnt everybody know it by now? Or that you shouldnt worry about what people think of you because they dont do it that often. Or that we are hardly creatures of the light in case you hadnt noticed. Or that the darkest hour is just before the storm. Or when you close your eyes do I go away? Do you?

Did he?

Yes. Me too.



Thursday, December 29, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt eight)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

What about mathematics?

Mathematics is just sweat and toil. I wish it were romantic. It isnt. At its worst there are audible suggestions. It’s hard to keep up. You dont dare sleep and you may have been up for two days but that’s too bad. You find yourself making a decision and finding two more decisions waiting and then four and then eight. You have to force yourself to just stop and go back. Begin again. You’re not seeking beauty, you’re seeking simplicity. The beauty comes later. After you’ve made a wreck of yourself.

Is it worth it?

Like nothing else on earth.



Wednesday, December 28, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt seven)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

We go to dinner. Sometimes with friends. We go to movies. We’re members of the Symphony. We go bowling.

You dont go bowling.

No. It must be my turn.

All right. Fire away.

It was just a joke. The bowling.

Bowling is not a joke. I love bowling. Bowling is my life.



Tuesday, December 27, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt six)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

I brought a lighter but I didnt think about an ashtray.

I can use the glass.

All right. Did your parents fight?

No. Toward the end he wasnt around all that much. He spent a lot of time in the South Pacific blowing things up.

That sounds pretty much a criticism.

It’s not a criticism. Boys like blowing things up.



Monday, December 26, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt five)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

You were born at Los Alamos.

Yes. Boxing Day. Nineteen fifty-one.

Boxing Day? What is that?

It’s the day after Christmas.



Saturday, December 24, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt four)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

My father didnt sleep before the bomb and he didnt sleep after. I think most of the scientists didnt give that much thought to what was going to happen. They were just having a good time. They all said the same thing about the Manhattan Project. That they’d never had so much fun in their lives. But anyone who doesnt understand that the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant events in human history hasnt been paying attention. It’s up there with fire and language. It’s at least number three and it may be number one. We just dont know yet. But we will.



Friday, December 23, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt three)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

All right. What else?

What else. He was one of a group of scientists who went into Hiroshima after the war to report on the damage. I think he was sobered by what he saw. I cant really speak for him. Whoever made the bomb was going to blow something up with it and I’m sure he thought better us than them. Whoever them might turn out to be. The arguments about Truman’s decision generally center around the loss of life in a land invasion. My father had another take on it. He thought that if Japan had been defeated in a land invasion there would have been no miracle of reconstruction after the war. That Japan would have been humiliated as a nation and would have entered into a long decline. But as it was, they were not defeated in battle. They were defeated by witchcraft.

That doesnt seem a bit self-serving?

If you like. It might also be true.



Thursday, December 22, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt two)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

What’s a gluon?

A conceivable notion.

Is it a force or a particle?

A particle. Although at that scale the distinction is not so clear.

What does it do?

It carries the news from quark to quark. It’s not that complicated. An atom is composed of smaller particles. Nucleons. And these particles are composed of quarks. Generally three. The quarks have dumb names. Top quark and bottom quark. Up and down quarks. A positron is made of two up quarks and a down quark. A neutron is made of two down quarks and an up quark. And so on. It all works. No one is quite sure why. But the gluon is what keeps the particles informed.



Wednesday, December 21, 2022

the last book I ever read (Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt one)

from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:

Well. I dont want to get off to a bad start. I just thought you might want to tell me a little about why you’re here.

I didnt have anyplace else to go.

And why here.

I’d been here before.

Why originally, then.

Because I couldnt get into Coletta.

And why Coletta?

It was where they sent Rosemary Kennedy. After her father had her brains scooped out.



Tuesday, December 20, 2022

the last book I ever read (Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, excerpt nine)

from Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature:

On another afternoon I entered Saint Patrice’s Church just off the Boulevard de la Marne to tell a priest that I’d had an abortion. I immediately realized this was a mistake. I felt bathed in a halo of light and for him I was a criminal. Leaving the church, I realized that I was through with religion.



Monday, December 19, 2022

the last book I ever read (Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, excerpt eight)

from Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature:

I would listen to Bach’s Passion According to St John in my room. When the Evangelist’s solo voice rang out in German to celebrate the Passion of Christ, I felt the ordeal I had suffered between October and January was being recounted in an unknown language. Then came the chorus Wohin! Wohin! The horizons parted, the kitchen in the Passage Cardinet, the probe and the blood all became engulfed in the misery of the world and eternal death. I felt saved.



Sunday, December 18, 2022

the last book I ever read (Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, excerpt seven)

from Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature:

On weekends the dorm was empty except for foreign students and a few girls whose parents lived far away. The nearby university canteen was closed. I didn’t mind, I had no desire for company. Thinking back, I realize I wasn’t afraid but serene: all I needed to do now was wait.

I was incapable of reading or listening to music. One day I took a sheet of paper and drew the Passage Cardinet the way I saw it as I was leaving the abortionist’s building: tall façades converging toward a crack in the background. The only time in my adult life when I have felt like drawing.



Saturday, December 17, 2022

the last book I ever read (Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, excerpt six)

from Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature:

She was concerned about my getting back home. She insisted on walking me to Pont-Cardinet station, where I could catch a train direct to Saint-Lazare. I wanted to take leave of her and be on my own. However, I didn’t want to offend her by turning down her offer, prompted—little did I know at the time—by the fear that I would be found unconscious on her doorstep. She grabbed a coat but kept on her slippers.



Friday, December 16, 2022

the last book I ever read (Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, excerpt five)

from Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature:

Thousands of girls have climbed up stairs and knocked on a door answered by a woman who is a complete stranger, to whom they are about to entrust their stomach and their womb. And that woman, the only person who can rid them of their misfortune, would open the door, in an apron and patterned slippers, clutching a dish towel, and inquire, “Yes, Miss, can I help you?”



Thursday, December 15, 2022

the last book I ever read (Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, excerpt four)

from Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature:

On December 31 I left Le Mont-Dore with a family who had offered to give me a lift back to Paris. I didn’t join in the conversation. At one point the woman said that the girl in the maid’s room had miscarried, “she was moaning all night.” All I remember about the journey was the rainy weather and that remark. This, and other sentences, either frightening or comforting, mostly from strangers, guided me toward the ordeal, supporting me like a viaticum until I too went through with it.



Wednesday, December 14, 2022

the last book I ever read (Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, excerpt three)

from Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature:

I turned all my attention to sport, hoping that my strenuous efforts or maybe even a fall might dislodge “that thing,” making it unnecessary for me to visit the woman in the 17th arrondissement. When Annick lent me her skiing gear, which I couldn’t afford to hire, I would repeatedly tumble, imagining each time I did that I was inflicting the fall that would save me. One day, after P and Annick had refused to climb any further, accompanied by Gontran alone I decided to brave the summit of Puy Jumel in my fake leather boots with their flared tops that let in the snow. I trudged on ahead, my eyes glued to the slope, dazzled by the reflection, finding it more and more difficult to extricate my feet from the powdery snow, driven by the overriding urge to make that embryo let go. I was convinced I had to push back my own limits and reach the top of the mountain to get rid of it. I wore myself out to kill it under me.



Tuesday, December 13, 2022

the last book I ever read (Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, excerpt two)

from Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature:

It has cost me quite some effort to resist the powerful hold of these images and leave behind the pale winter sunshine flooding the Place Saint-Marc in Rouen, the lyrics of Soeur Sourire or even the hushed atmosphere of the medical office on the Boulevard de l’Yser, belonging to a physician whose name I have long forgotten. To capture that invisible, elusive reality unknown to memory that had sent me scouring the streets in search of an unlikely doctor—the law.

The law was everywhere. In the euphemisms and understatements of my diary; the bulging eyes of Jean T; the so-called forced marriages, the musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the shame of women who aborted and the disapproval of those who did not. In the sheer impossibility of ever imagining that one day women might be able to abort freely. As was often the case, you couldn’t tell whether abortion was banned because it was wrong or wrong because it was banned. People judged according to the law, they didn’t judge the law.



Monday, December 12, 2022

the last book I ever read (Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, excerpt one)

from Happening by Annie Ernaux, Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature:

(About ten years ago I read in the newspaper Le Monde that the Singing Nun, as she was known throughout the world, had committed suicide. The article stated that after the hugely successful hit Dominique, she had come into conflict with the clergy, had eventually left the orders and moved in with a woman. Over the years she had given up singing and had sunk into oblivion. She had taken to drinking. I was deeply moved by her story. She couldn’t have imagined ever ending up that way—social misfit, alcoholic, renegade sister with homosexual proclivities. Yet this, I felt, was the woman who had held my hand as I roamed the streets of Martainville, a lost, solitary figure. We had both lost our bearings, although at different moments in time. What gave me the courage to go on living that afternoon was the voice of a woman who was to hit rock bottom and die. I passionately hoped that life had brought her some small glimmer of happiness and that, on those lonely, whisky-sodden evenings, having learned the contemporary meaning of niquer—to screw—she could tell herself that, at the end of the day, she really did screw all the other nuns.

SÅ“ur Sourire is one of the many women I have never met, and with whom I might have very little in common, but who have always been close to my heart. Be they dead or alive, real people or fictional characters, they form an invisible chain of artists, authoresses, literary heroines and figures from my childhood. I feel that they embrace my own story.)



Thursday, December 8, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt ten)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

He got his bicycle from the courtyard of the bodega at Cala Sabina and hung the bag over the handlebars and set out up the road toward San Javier and the headlands at La Mola. Fields of new wheat slashing softly in the roadside dark. Up through the pine forest. Pushing the bike. Alone in the world.



Wednesday, December 7, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt nine)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

The city was cold and gray. Gray stooks of snow along the curb. The date for registration at the university came and went. She’d not been out in days. Then weeks. Her brother sent her a television set and she sat looking at it still in the box. It sat there all day. Finally she set about unpacking it. She put on her robe and opened the door and got the television up in her arms and went down the hallway with it and knocked at the last door with the back of her hand. Mrs Grimley, she called. She waited. Finally the old woman cracked the door and peered out.



Tuesday, December 6, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt eight)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

The first spits of rain fell.

Do you mind terribly if we dont loiter? How come you never got another cat?

I just didnt want to lose anything else. I’m all lost out.



Monday, December 5, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt seven)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

Was drinking a problem?

I don’t know. I guess I’d have to say it was. I’d wake up in strange places. I woke up one time in somebody’s parked car and I thought, well, what if you woke up dead? That kind of got to me. I mean, do you think if you died drunk you’d sober up before you met Jesus?

Good question. I don’t know.

I thought about that. Standin in front of him drunk. What would he say. Hell, what would you say?

I guess I dont think your soul gets drunk.

Webb thought about that. Well, he said. Maybe yours dont.



Sunday, December 4, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt six)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

It was dark by the time he reached Hattiesburg. He had turned on the lights at dusk and he drove to the Alabama State line just east of Meridian in one hour flat. One hundred and ten miles. It was seventy miles to Tuscaloosa and the highway was straight and empty except for an occasional semi and he opened the Maserati up and drove the forty miles to Clinton Alabama in eighteen minutes redlining the engine twice at what the speedometer logged as a hundred and sixty-five miles an hour. By then he thought he’d probably used up most of his luck with the State police and the small town speedtraps he’d blown through and he motored leisurely through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham and crossed the Tennessee State line just south of Chattanooga five hours and forty minutes after leaving New Orleans.



Saturday, December 3, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt five)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

He went upstairs and fed the cat and stretched out on the bed with the cat on his stomach. You are the best cat, he said. I dont think I ever knew a finer cat.

He thought that he would go out and get something to eat. Then he thought he would see what was in the little refrigerator. Then he fell asleep.



Friday, December 2, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt four)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

It just came to him.

Not exactly. Still, it’s a simple enough idea. That nucleons are composed—as it were—of a small companionship of lesser particles. Groups of three. For the hadrons. All but identical. He called them aces. He told me he didnt think anyone else could figure this out and that he had all the time in the world to formalize it. He didnt know that Murray was on his trail and that he had less than a year. In the end Murray called the particles quarks—after a line in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, referring to cottage cheese. Three quarks for Muster Mark. And he swept the field and won the Nobel Prize and George went into therapy. But George came out the better for it.

This is a true story.



Thursday, December 1, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt three)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

Best cheeseburger I ever ate was at the lunchcounter at Comer’s Pool Hall on Gay Street in Knoxville Tennessee. You couldnt get the grease off your fingers with gasoline. You still havent told me where you’re going.

Yeah, I know. We’re goin to Venezuela.



Wednesday, November 30, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt two)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

Bianca smiled. She sipped her drink. Tell me something, she said.

Of course.

Does Knoxville produce crazy people or does it just attract them?

Interesting question. Nature nurture. Actually the more deranged of them seem to hail from the neighboring hinterlands. Good question though. Let me get back to you on that.



Tuesday, November 29, 2022

the last book I ever read (The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, excerpt one)

from The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy:

You dont know anything. You just make things up.

Yeah. But some of it’s pretty cool.

Some of it.

How about this: What’s black and white and red all over?

I cant begin to think.

Trotsky in a tuxedo.

Great.




Sunday, November 27, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt fourteen)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

Something had spoiled Paulie and Pammy. Well, it wasn’t her. She’d always been firm. Once she’d left them at the zoo for disobeying. When she’d told them to stop feeding the giraffe they’d continued. She’d left them at the zoo and gone for a cocktail, and when she returned Pammy and Paulie were standing repentant at the front gate, zoo balloons deflated. That had been a good lesson in obedience. A month later, at Ed Pedloski’s funeral, when, with a single harsh look, she’d ordered them to march past the open coffin, they’d marched past the open coffin lickety-split, no shenanigans.

Poor Ed had looked terrible, having been found after several days on his kitchen floor.



Saturday, November 26, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt thirteen)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

Mr. Regis unplugs the mic from his little amp, picks up the little amp, walks sadly off, if one can be said to walk sadly while carrying a little amp.



Friday, November 25, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt twelve)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

“I just couldn’t blow my whistle on you,” Amy says. “I’ve found you cute since we were little.”

“I’ve found you cute, too,” I say.

Which I haven’t, that much, but it seems like a bad moment to begin violating politeness.



Thursday, November 24, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt eleven)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

Then came a change. Because she was in love, or fancied herself to be, with Randy, and because, I expect, she could feel that not only did he not feel the same way, he didn’t feel much about her at all (and why would he, given that she was, as mentioned, expecienced by most people as a slightly puzzling blankness), she started, perhaps, to panic a little, to sense, maybe for the first time in her life, that her natural way of being was not interesting enough to get the attention of (much less delight or captivate) someone like, even, Randy, who, I should say, was no font of originality himself but at least had a big truck he loved and would wash with pleasure every Friday after his shift and sometimes would at least make a dirty joke or pick up a strange-looking damaged orange and do the funny voice in which he imagined such an orange might speak, and was, for example, a passionate advocate for, and defender of, his mother, a mean old thing who lived a few houses down from the store, a strongly self-certain lightning bolt of constant opining who presented as a fierce pair of black men’s glasses moving around on a tanned, agitated face.

But Randy, as they say, thought his mother hung the moon, and this was because she thought he hung it. It was a kind of mutual admiration society. He got along nicely with her. And she got along nicely with him. Which was, I thought, we all thought, part of the reason he’d never married, perhaps.

It was a small town, and we did a good deal of talking about such things.



Wednesday, November 23, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt ten)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

When you reach a certain age, you see that time is all we have. By which I mean, moments like those springing deer this morning, and watching your mother be born, and sitting at the dining room table here waiting for the phone to ring and announce that a certain baby (you) had been born, or that day when all of us hiked out at Point Lobos. That extremely loud seal, your sister’s scarf drifting down, down to that black, briny boulder, the replacement you so generously bought her in Monterey, how pleased you made her with your kindness. Those things were real. That is what (that is all) one gets. All this other stuff is real only to the extent that it interferes with those moments.



Tuesday, November 22, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt nine)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

God, the hours of her life she’d spent trying to be good. Standing at the sink, deciding if some plastic tofu tub was recyclable. That time she’d hit a squirrel and circled back to see if she could rush it to the vet. No squirrel. But that didn’t prove anything. It might have crawled off to die under a bush. She’d parked the car and looked under bush after bush until a lady came out of a hair salon to ask if she was okay.



Monday, November 21, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt eight)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

This was real. This had happened. A guy had attacked her kid and suffered no consequences whatsoever and was probably off bragging about it to some other deadbeats around a campfire or whatnot.



Sunday, November 20, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt seven)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

Once she’d dreamed he’d started smoking. In the dream, he’d been smoking a cigar. At Cub Scouts. Sort of flaunting it. He had a man’s voice and, in that voice, asked Mr. Belden if there was such a thing as a Smoking Merit Badge. Next morning, in real life, he’d busted her sniffing his clothes and started bawling the way he did when he was totally telling the truth but not being heard.



Saturday, November 19, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt six)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

Their leader urges Company to stay calm. Company does not: two men demand to know what this is, what is this all about, do they not know this is a private home? The leader urges the two men to step into the aisle, speak their minds, he is (they are) here to listen.

“I would hope so,” says the more rotund of the two, though both are rotund, then joins the leader in the aisle and extends a hand to his less-rotund friend, who is having some trouble getting out.

Both rotund men are now in the aisle, ready to register their feelings.



Friday, November 18, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt five)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

Stomping out, he flicks the lights off, on, off.

Mr. U. follows adult son Mike out.

Jean goes over, flicks the lights back on.

“Forget him, guys,” she says to us. “Just do your thing. Have fun.”

We plan to. We plan to just do our thing, have fun.



Thursday, November 17, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt four)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

Lauren is Major Marcus Reno, ordered by Custer to take his battalion and attack the village at its south end. Custer has promised to support him in this. Reno would prefer to stay with the main group. He has never been in a proper Indian fight. But off he rides. When the village comes into sight, the battalion breaks into a gallop. The men whoop. Soon they will be covered in glory. In the distance: white shapes, fragile structures, containing human beings. The aim is to fire into the tents, ride over them, cause a panic, chase down and kill any who flee on foot.

But now a dozen or so Hunkpapas appear, riding back and forth in the path of the advance, raising dust in an attempt to gain the women and children time to escape.



Wednesday, November 16, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt three)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

“I just want you all to know,” he says. “You’re not alone. There are many of us who see this thing for the monstrous excess it is. You’re human beings. You are. Even if the world—even if my parents—seem to have forgotten it. But help is coming. It is. Soon.”

Then does his palms-together bow and leaves.

Lauren and Craig and I exchange looks of: Wow, thanks, adult son Mike, we did not know, until you just now told us, that we are human beings.

Then exchange worried looks.

It is always regrettable to have attracted the attention of adult son Mike.



Tuesday, November 15, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt two)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

“Company tonight,” he says. “We’ll do City.”

So: a long, anxious day. We would really like to Rehearse. But Mr. U must go to Work. What I do to prepare: think about City, all day. Once we begin, it is mostly us. Our Speaking is being supercharged and made more articulate via the Pulse, yes, shaped, of course, by the Settings, but still, at the end of the day, it is, mostly, us. It is me, Craig, and Lauren, and we do not Speak identically well, if I may say so, and preparation is part (but only part) of the reason why one of us may, for example, tend to Speak better (in a more lofty, engaging way) than the others. There is also something innate: talent, one might term it.

It is not a competition. And yet it is.



Monday, November 14, 2022

the last book I ever read (Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders, excerpt one)

from Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders:

She is, that is, I believe, falling for me. And I am falling for her. When I first began Speaking to her of her Beauty it was, yes, mostly the Settings. The Settings said: Jeremy, Speak, while looking at me, of my Beauty. Also, my Specificity was always set, by her, to high. Speaking of her Beauty so often, with such high Specificity, made her Beauty real to me; made me notice it. (She really is so Beautiful.) As I began Speaking to her of her Beauty with more fervor (feeling more fervor, because noticing her Beauty with more specificity, thereby Speaking of it with greater precision), she began, from there on the floor, to get, more and more often, a certain soft look upon her face, an arousal look, yes, but also a love look. I believe so.



Sunday, November 13, 2022

the last book I ever read (Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, excerpt eighteen)

from Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman:

Trump’s sanguinity had worn off by the second week after the election. He informed aides he had no intention of departing the White House for Biden. “I’m just not going to leave,” he told one. “We’re never leaving,” he told another. “How can you leave when you won an election?” To the chair of the Republican National Committee, he was overheard asking, “Why should I leave if they stole it from me?” Never before in history had a president refused to vacate the White House—the closest parallel might have been Mary Todd Lincoln, who stayed in the mansion for nearly a month after her husband was assassinated—and Trump’s cold declaration left aides uncertain as to what he might do next. They ignored his comments, hoping he would move on, but his defiance soon took other forms.

He was not willing to hear from anyone about a concession to Biden. On November 12, Trump had planned to meet with campaign officials to discuss a plan for what to do with the massive sums—ultimately more than $200 million over three weeks—raised since the election, on the pretense of combating voter fraud. That conversation was delayed, as the campaign leadership was overtaken by what became an hours-long session about contesting election results in the six states where Trump’s allies were trying to change the results. As Clark, the top lawyer on the campaign, presented an update on the situation in Georgia, delving into arcana about the state’s statutes to explain the so-called hand recount under way, he was interrupted by a voice on the phone. “No, it’s all wrong,” said Giuliani, to whom Trump had been criticizing Clark in private. White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who would become Clark’s closest ally in the weeks ahead, said Trump’s lawyers should let the hand recount finish before pursuing other legal remedies in Trump’s name. “We should stop the recount immediately,” Giuliani protested. Clark replied that the process was part of the secretary of state’s authority. “It is what it is,” he said resignedly. “You’re lying to the president,” Giuliani yelled back, claiming that Clark was minimizing Trump’s chances of success. Clark yelled back, “You’re a fucking asshole.” Trump hung up the phone and turned to Clark. “Will you go call him and make up?” Trump said. Clark agreed and, after the meeting had concluded, apologized to Pence for swearing in front of him. “There’s no reason to apologize when it’s the truth,” Pence replied.



Saturday, November 12, 2022

the last book I ever read (Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, excerpt seventeen)

from Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman:

On camera, Trump could not resist trying to one-up and undermine his own specialists. After a top Homeland Security science adviser presented research revealing the virus to be vulnerable to higher temperatures, Trump mused aloud about potential applications of this finding. “So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous—whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light—and I think you said that hasn’t been checked because of the testing,” Trump said, before looking off to the side of the room where his doctors typically sat while he spoke, apparently in search of affirmation. “And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too.” And then, “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see, it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

Trump searched for a quick virus remedy, from anyone who could get through to him. After billionaire tech entrepreneur Larry Ellison and the Fox News host Laura Ingraham evangelized to him about the supposed efficacy of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as an alternative therapeutic to prevent the virus, Trump began to endorse its use. “Look, it may work and it may not work,” Trump told reporters, relying on Norman Vincent Peale’s power-of-positive-thinking method to combat the novel virus. “And I agree with the doctor, what he said: It may work, it may not work. I feel good about it. That’s all it is. Just a feeling. You know, I’m a smart guy. I feel good about it.”



Thursday, November 10, 2022

the last book I ever read (Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, excerpt sixteen)

from Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman:

He had been in a sour mood from the time he boarded Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base. Over the Atlantic, he had erupted by phone at British prime minister Theresa May with a litany of perceived grievances after she tried to play to his vanity by congratulating him on his party’s midterm successes. After arriving in Europe, Trump praised Adolf Hitler, saying that he had accomplished some good things. Some who were told of the remark in real time suspected—and perhaps hoped—that it was intended purely to provoke Kelly. Even when Trump didn’t intend to tweak Kelly, he managed to offend him: at one point during Kelly’s tenure, Trump questioned in Kelly’s presence why people would choose to go into the military. At that moment, he and Kelly were standing together at the Arlington National Cemetery gravesite where the retired general’s son was buried.

Kelly and Dunford ended up heading to Belleau alone, as Trump remained in his Paris hotel room. A few explanations went around for the last-minute cancellation. The weather was bad, and traveling by car instead of helicopter would take too long or force the closure of too many Paris roads. However, Kelly deputy Zach Fuentes alerted other officials to the decision not to travel about fifteen minutes before the Secret Service made its determination about the safety of flying. Media coverage of Trump traveling all the way to France only to skip the ceremony honoring American war dead was predictably critical (and included several accounts from staff saying anonymously that Fuentes had been responsible). When he saw how his trip was being covered, Trump screamed at staff, complaining that the decision not to attend had been made for him and that he could have gone after all. It was reported much later, by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, based on several sources, that Trump had derided the war dead and told Kelly that he did not want his hair to get wet in the rain.



Wednesday, November 9, 2022

the last book I ever read (Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, excerpt fifteen)

from Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman:

After nearly two hours behind closed doors in Helsinki, Trump and Putin held a press conference at which Trump said the special counsel’s “probe is a disaster for our country” because it had interfered with U.S.–Russian relations. Jonathan Lemire, of the Associated Press, asked Trump about the assessment of U.S. intelligence that Russia conducted the email hackings, and asked, “Would you now with the whole world watching tell President Putin—would you denounce what happened in 2016 and would you warn him to never do it again?” Trump responded with a rambling answer about wanting to see the server from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s deleted emails, before saying, “President Putin—he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Putin chimed in that the matter needed to be settled in a court of law, not by an investigation. Some aides speculated that Trump was simply being contrary or trying to please the person standing next to him. Regardless of his motivations, by taking Putin’s denial at face value, Trump was publicly siding with the leader of a foreign adversary over his own intelligence officials. Most of Trump’s advisers and cabinet officials were uncertain how to process what had just taken place. Some Trump senior aides said they felt physically ill watching it happen.



Tuesday, November 8, 2022

the last book I ever read (Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, excerpt fourteen)

from Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman:

Trump offered different explanations for Comey’s removal throughout the week. Initially the White House tried to paint the firing as coming at the recommendation of Rosenstein. In a private meeting with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador, Trump volunteered that he had removed the “nut job” Comey and that doing so relieved “great pressure.” Then Trump gave an interview to NBC News anchor Lester Holt, during which he seemed to connect the firing to the Russia investigation. “In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won,’ ” he said. But Trump’s answer was so clunky and at times incoherent that it wasn’t entirely clear that he was intending to say the investigation was the reason for the dismissal.

Comey’s firing set in motion a series of events that overwhelmed Trump’s presidency for the next two years. A week later, my colleague Michael Schmidt revealed that Comey had drafted a slew of secret memos about his encounters with the president, including the one in which Trump had indicated that Comey should end the Flynn investigation. It swiftly changed the view of Trump’s intentions among Democrats, media, and some Justice Department officials. With that pressure bearing down, in place of the recused Sessions, Rosenstein—who was not a Trump loyalist—named a special counsel to investigate not only the possibility of conspiracy between Russians and the Trump campaign, but whether Trump had attempted to obstruct the investigation by firing Comey.



Monday, November 7, 2022

the last book I ever read (Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, excerpt thirteen)

from Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman:

Kushner continued to engage with liberal groups who had hopes for a version of Trump that ultimately did not exist. One such overture was to David Plouffe, a former top adviser to Obama now working with Mark Zuckerberg–funded groups. Arriving in the West Wing to meet with Kushner, Plouffe looked around the room at what had once been his own work space and said to Kushner, “I love what you’ve done with the office.” Kushner looked blankly at Plouffe and said, “Oh, have you been here before?” Plouffe’s eyes traveled to the small television sets that had been embedded into the wall since he worked there. Why were they there? he asked. Kushner replied that his father-in-law was watching throughout the day, and he needed to know what Trump was seeing.



Sunday, November 6, 2022

the last book I ever read (Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, excerpt twelve)

from Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman:

Trump was the only modern president who had never met most of his senior advisers and cabinet appointees before he won the presidency; his three top White House aides—Priebus, Bannon, and Kushner—had never served in government either. He approached the new bureaucracy in much the same way he had a family-run business, demanding that employees sign agreements that would prevent them from ever speaking publicly about the experience. The White House counsel made clear to some staff that the contracts were not enforceable.