Tag Archives: writing

“Bid for Connection”

Posted on July 8, 2019 by JMN

Frank Bruni has written about his personal confrontation with potential loss of vision. In this column he writes of Joel Burcat, an environmental lawyer who has published a debut novel, “Drink to Every Beast,” after becoming legally blind. Bruni celebrates … Continue reading →

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Vindication of Stuttering

Posted on June 8, 2019 by JMN

The battle with speech impediment can equip persons like Darcey Steinke with fascinating insights into language. It was around this time [in elementary school] that I started separating the alphabet into good letters, V as well as M, and bad … Continue reading →

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Francophilia

Posted on June 1, 2019 by JMN

Where I live I have not encountered in recent memory an American who knows, or wants to know, French. Roger Cohen’s encomium to the language and culture is touching. It’s poignant to share French love with another outsider. To be … Continue reading →

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“The Skill of Deep Watching”

Posted on March 10, 2019 by JMN

This essay by Salvatore Scibona, a novelist, speaks to me for its call to transcend the outrage bait, the incitements to be condemnatory, to which we are exposed in so much discourse. His reviving of a more “capacious” meaning of … Continue reading →

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Correct Me If I’m Wrong

Posted on March 4, 2019 by JMN

People often say that our problem in America today is incivility or intolerance. This is incorrect… You might be tempted to say we need to find ways to disagree less, but that is incorrect… This might sound like a call … Continue reading →

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Widely Accepted Attribution Standard

Posted on February 9, 2019 by JMN

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/feb/07/jill-abramson-plagiarism-accusation-merchants-of-truth Abramson has defended herself by saying that her book includes extensive endnotes, including web links to sources. It is widely believed that an outside source should be credited in the body of the work if there is a close … Continue reading →

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Thank you for asking

Posted on January 6, 2019 by JMN

“How many Likes?” It behooves me not to get fouled up in the stats. This blog is a self-pleasuring diary with benefits. I intend to let it spurt beyond my passing for a beat, then go poof with me into … Continue reading →

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Spot On

Posted on January 4, 2019 by JMN

i.pinimg.com/236x/af/0a/5e/af0a5e1f54ce7bd39bdacda274b78d97–iris-murdoch-irish-people.jpg Dame Iris Murdoch had been a philosophy don at Oxford before she became a novelist, and as far as I was concerned, her philosophy of life was spot on, as someone in a British novel might say. (Susan Scarf … Continue reading →

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Muriel Spark

Posted on December 21, 2018 by JMN

Perhaps it is that particular literary quality, her poet’s rigorous understanding of what another modernist, D. H. Lawrence, called “the jump of words along the line”—when set against the easy-to-read “Miss Jean Brodie,” with its mass-market appeal—that has confused her … Continue reading →

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Truth in Fiction

Posted on December 8, 2018 by JMN

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/08/nicola-sturgeon-rachel-kushner-in-conversation-fiction-politics-prison My job, fundamentally, is all about people and it’s the individual stories that give me a sense of the issues I need to use my position to influence or change. That’s why I see reading fiction as an indispensable … Continue reading →

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