let my children hear music
Thick thick black clouds outside: it's nearly eclipse-dark. Gusts of wind are coming up, stripping orange leaves from the branches; they go past in flurries, illustrating the air currents like iron filings illustrate the layout of magnetic fields, scraping for a moment against my window screen, falling away. Great piles of leaves are appearing all over the city. I guess maybe there will be bonfires soon: is that what happens? I can't remember what was done with the leaves last year, but last year I didn't live near many trees.
Dear reader, if the New Yorker continues to reject your fiction, it's probably al Qaeda's fault. Bill Buford sez:
I edit the fiction at the New Yorker. My colleagues pass me notes. "I liked this story," one writes, "but that was before September 11. Now it doesn't seem right." "This story was written before everything happened. I thought it was good. It's about not having money in an affluent New York. Now it doesn't seem right." I speak to fiction writers. They want to write non-fiction.
The Alice Munro story that he goes on to mention was excellent, though, no doubt.
Leos Janacek: the third way in classical music's 20th-century culture wars. Of the pieces mentioned, I'm a fan of the two string quartets in particular.
