Posts by author
Maria Chiang
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We’re Getting On, Are You?
“After the march on Chase, I returned to Liberty Square. I was participating, at last, but the nature of my participation remained vague. In the early stages of a movement, it’s important to simply show up and be counted. Few…
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Talking with Didion
“I wanted to write about having children and how we dealt with having children, and that really wasn’t what the book turned out to be about at all. The book was, in a lot of ways, about my getting older.…
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Paul La Farge Reading
Tomorrow in SF“Luminous Airplanes has a singular form: the novel, complete in itself, is accompanied by an online “immersive text,” which continues the story and complements it. Nearly ten years in the making, La Farge’s ambitious new work considers large worlds and…
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Choice Propaganda
“This stupid little Facebook photo is not only ill-informed, it’s harmful. Nothing on it has anything to do with reality. It has everything to do with a false rhetoric that’s being promoted by people who either don’t know about the…
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Share Ourshelves
“Founded by Kristina Kearns, Ourshelves was inspired by all the talk of the publishing industry’s impending death and Kearns’ personal desire to preserve books. ‘I wanted to create something between a bookshop and a library,’ Kearns said.” Today, Mission Mission…
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Homelessness and Occupiers
“What occupiers from all walks of life are discovering, at least every time they contemplate taking a leak, is that to be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born “illegals,” facing prohibitions…
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“Perfectly Flawed”
“So instead we’re talking flawed main characters, neither villains nor anti-heroes, whom the author has deliberately, even perversely contrived as hard to like.” Lionel Shriver, director of We Need to Talk About Kevin, discusses the unique value and craft of…
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“No Fucking Around”
“Pitchfork: Is the car generally a place to write for you? TW: A good one. You’re enclosed, you’re alone, you’re quiet. Perfect. There’s a feeling of a vanishing point. And you’re moving, like a song moves as it’s going through…
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Murakami: A Glimpse of the Man
“For 30 years now, he has lived a monkishly regimented life, each facet of which has been precisely engineered to help him produce his work. He runs or swims long distances almost every day, eats a healthful diet, goes to…
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Art Exhibit: Here Be Dragons, Tonight in San Francisco!
“The exhibition references the phrase ‘here be dragons’ used in medieval times to denote unexplored territories, where mapmakers placed sea serpents and other mythological creatures in blank areas of maps. Like cartographers centuries ago, the artists in this exhibition map…
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Poet Jim
“The power of the Doors’ music is that it is so unabashedly arty that it begs to be made fun of, especially by older people or those who went through Doors periods themselves and are now into Steely Dan or…
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More Mohr
“‘I’m so moved by the artistic bravery here, like this guy who plays a screeching violin,’ he said. ‘I don’t get it, but still I’m inspired to go home and try harder. So much about being a writer isn’t about…