Tag: history

Life Writing

Reflection: Call Them By Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) by Rebecca Solnit

LJ Maher

Rebecca Solnit is, for me, an essayist who I can read with ease. I agree with most of her takes, I find her turn of phrase clear, but not patronising, and I enjoy the way she weaves her knowledge and experience as an historian into her observations about life in what has been fairly complex, turbulent, and angry times. I enjoy the essay as a genre of writing, but I can no longer drag together the energy to be righteously indignant every time I read something. I think this is why I love Solnit. She offers relief. She offers hope. I know she can be pop-feministy, but there are also times when I want to listen to pop music, or watch reality TV and I think these things can teach readers, in their own small, quiet, softly, softly ways.

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Poetry

Reflection: Broken Teeth by Tony Birch

LJ Maher

There is a special circle in hell

For whomever it is that invented “sale” stickers

That refuse to peel off. 

Scraping away at the front cover of a book

Becomes an exercise in precision,

Trying not to rip or ruin an elegant design.

I am reduced to surgery:

A paring knife,

Tweezers,

Cotton wool,

Eucalyptus oil.

And I pad, scrape, pick, and lift

The fading scab of $9.95

From the delicate matte-finished skin beneath.

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Fiction, Life Writing

Sounds of Silence: Audiobooks and the Reader

LJ Maher

I’ve been listening to audiobooks. I’ve had friends and colleagues tell me that this is a thing that I should be doing for ages. This makes sense, I’m busy, I’m overcommitted, I commute and I do a lot of walking. Audiobooks should be a way of maximising productivity and pleasure in one hit. In some ways, they have been. I enjoy being read to, there’s something delightful and childish about it. I find it comforting.

I also find it hard to concentrate, and I often have to go back and repeat entire chapters. I realise that as I’ve been cleaning, walking, staring out of the train window, whatever, I’ve lost half a story. In one ear, out the other.

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