Author Archives: JMN

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About JMN

I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.

Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio)

Posted on October 10, 2018 by JMN

The exhibition’s principal curator, Francesca Cappelletti, said her aim was to demonstrate “what Caravaggio’s intellectual legacy was, not only as a painter but as an inventor.” He found new ways of depicting age-old subjects, be they mythological or biblical, and … Continue reading →

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Julian Schnabel: Rudimentary Concerns

Posted on October 10, 2018 by JMN

“What the surface of a painting can be is an obsession of mine,” Mr. Schnabel said. “If you see how the plate paintings function, it’s very three-dimensional, both physically and spatially. I like dealing with physical problems and rudimentary concerns … Continue reading →

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Dystopia Myopia

Posted on October 10, 2018 by JMN

Quotation of the Day One of the things about looking at the world through a feminist lens is that we are already in a dystopia. — Leni Zumas, author of “Red Clocks,” part of a growing canon of female-written dystopian … Continue reading →

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Stag Country: The Endicotts weren’t from here…

Posted on October 7, 2018 by JMN

The Endicotts weren’t from here. They came in the fifties from one of those towns the other side of Buckwaller. Rowena Endicott was a flouncy thing, half silly, always showed more leg in her skirts than was necessary. Her and me co-captained … Continue reading →

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1987: A Mark Twain Anecdote

Posted on October 7, 2018 by JMN

[In a letter to my mother I cite the following quotation from “God’s Fool,” the biography of Twain that I was reading. ] I do seem to have a whole lot of interest in a lot of arts and things. … Continue reading →

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Leonardo’s Weird Faces

Posted on October 7, 2018 by JMN

[All images are from Frank Zöllner, “Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings,” Taschen] [Leonardo’s] drawings often of men and women with strangely deformed or exaggerated features — which he called “visi mostruosi,” or “monstrous faces,” and which scholars … Continue reading →

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The Scream

Posted on October 7, 2018 by JMN

There was a time I literally screamed in my own dining room, about something that didn’t warrant such a scream… It was so — to use a word I use a lot in my first book — *inappropriate*. There were … Continue reading →

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Meatballs and Mothers

Posted on October 7, 2018 by JMN

Quotation of the Day “There were a lot of things being said about my mother that day, a lot of it bad stuff and depressing. But the best one was ‘Hey, Canha, your mother’s meatballs aren’t that good.’ ” — Mark … Continue reading →

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Fiction’s Mission

Posted on October 7, 2018 by JMN

[Quotation from a 1993 interview of David Foster Wallace, one of several that Michael Schur, creator of sitcom “The Good Place,” keeps in his office.] Look, man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid … Continue reading →

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1987 Correspondence: “The other topic…” [redacted]

Posted on October 3, 2018 by JMN

[Dear Mother,] The other topic grabbed me almost as I was leaving Philadelphia. I picked up a hotel copy of the Inquirer and sort of skimmed the article about [Name] resigning as head of [Organization], which means, apparently, either “[Phrase]” … Continue reading →

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