Advice for Privileged Wannabe Writers
Plus: The pencil brand named for a cartoonist, a new baseball storytelling newsletter, Bolaño, and advice for our divisive times.
Adam
I finished a notebook a few days ago. A Field Notes Foiled Again edition (red subscriber variant). Ted, occasional co-host Ryan, and I found ourselves synced up, all using this excellent hot-foil stamped edition earlier this year. Here are some of the things I wrote about:
Pencil brand Caran d’Ache is named after the late-19th-century French cartoonist Caran d’Ache.
Sterling HolyWhiteMountain read and discussed Bolaño’s story “Labyrinth” for the New Yorker. He praised its “wandering recursive structure.” That recording is part of the New Yorker’s fiction podcast, which is free, so don’t be stymied by the paywall.
“Bolaño was one of those ‘special’ guys who always carried a notebook around with him. He wrote in it all day but didn’t discuss what he had written. He was a sponge who asked a lot of questions, and the many anecdotes told to him by friends were scribbled down in a notebook and later appeared in his books.”
- Bolaño by MaristainThis PDQ Bach obituary. This paywall, on the other hand, is unscalable. But there are other obits.
Saunders’ advice for writers who feel their upbringing was privileged, who haven’t lived a life required to be a writer. I read this long newsletter, took a lot of notes, reread the whole thing, and continue returning to it.
Jon Ronson has a new season of his podcast Things Fell Apart on BBC Sounds. It’s unexpected and instructive. His advice for our divisive times:
Curiosity over judgment
Patience
I took pages of notes while reading Benjamin Percy’s essay on “Urgency.” I found his excellent book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction in a little free library.
Project 3.18: Baseball storytelling at its best
Ted
My dear friend Paul Jackson has launched a newsletter, Project 3.18, that will provide you with enough idiosyncratic baseball stories to fuel a thousand dinner party conversations. You simply won’t do better when it comes to unearthing pimpled humanity through the filter of the national pastime. Fullest Take Note endorsement.
Feb Pods
195: https://www.takenote.space/blog/2024/2/4/195
196: https://www.takenote.space/blog/2024/2/26/episode-196-mountaintop
This gets a comment, a like, and a few tears.