Running for Your Life: What Else Are You Reading?

Caught up in space-time after the discovery of “the chirp,” the first bit of hard evidence that gravitational waves can be heard? http://nyp.st/1o2z3Mg. Then read about those “Ripples on a Cosmic Sea,” a book by David Blair and Geoff McNamara http://bit.ly/21oG48D.

I cracked open this book a few years ago, but now … with the most definitive news yet that Einstein was right! … I’ve a whole new impetus to a greater understanding of black holes, general theory of relativity, dark matter, gravitational lenses, the curvature of space-time …

Read it with the stars overhead – on a beach during a winter vacation, or as I have done, under the spell of full moon insomnia. It won’t put you back to sleep, but, man, oh, man, what a cool way to keep in touch with the wonders of the universe and the genius of theory.

Next: Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Running for Your Life: What Are You Reading?

Has the howl from the political wilderness of vulgar and unrighteous thought, lies and sons and daughters of lies, the parade to come of soul-degrading attack ads marching down roads built by oligarchs obsessed by absolute power got you down?

Then turn to Dave Eggers. I’m here to tell you that his sleeper novel, the object of attacks, “The Circle” http://bit.ly/1oYaeSu, pings just the right tone. This is a dissent for the ages. The screen-obsessed ages. If Munch defined “The Scream” of the human soul in the industrial age, Eggers in “The Circle” defines “The Screen” in the digital age. A cautionary tale in this the most cautionary of times.

Great stuff. Scary. Not the fully developed characters we’ve come to expect from the author (I’m looking at you, “What Is the What” http://bit.ly/1SNPrx8 ) but as I’m writing this note it’s come to me that that is the point. Be too immersed in social media as culture and sacrifice character. Consider the continuum: less screen time, more character, more screen time, less inner life. Writing powerful inner lives for his characters has been an Eggers hallmark in his previous works. In “The Circle,” he drained his characters of that dimension to make a chilling point in his novel of digital dissent.

(Oh, and the twist at the end … took my breath away.)

But don’t take my word for it. Take Eggers’s. You won’t be sorry.

Next: Running for Your Life: What Else Are You Reading?

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Today (Feb. 18) Donald Trump attacked Pope Francis. Pope Francis?!!

What’s next, Charlie Brown? Of course, Trump would lay into Charlie Brown for being a LOSER. I mean what kind of a young man would – time and again – expect a wily young woman to NOT deceive him when she presents for his kicking enjoyment a football teed up just so. LOSER! LOSER! LOSER!

If only Charles Schulz were alive. He would come to Charlie Brown’s defense, wouldn’t he? Maybe, what it takes is a blast from the past, a choice Peanuts comic strip to be the thing that would knock down this clown from his high horse …

Next: Running for Your Life: What Are You Reading?

Running for Your Life: If the Great Were With Us Thursday

These days of Facebook selfies and gasping self-promotion in all facets of the creative life pause a moment to reflect on a pre-iPhone great, David Foster Wallace.

On the twentieth anniversary of the publication of his ambitious tour de force, “Infinite Jest,” consider this piece of journalism  by The New Yorker’s D.T Max about the inherent character of this literary original. (Wallace committed suicide in 2008. He was 46 years old.)

“[Wallace] told most people that he did not use e-mail, but he gave his students an address. Sections of “Infinite Jest” began to appear in magazines, but he downplayed his growing fame as a writer. Doug Hesse, a colleague, made the mistake of praising an essay of Wallace’s. “He did this gesture of wiping the butt with one hand and pointing to his mouth with the other,” Hesse remembers. “I learned really really quickly not to go beyond the equivalent of ‘How’s the weather?’ ”

“Downplaying his growing fame as a writer”? There may be those who say a man who enjoyed the kind of fame that Wallace did in the last decade of his life could afford to be dismissive of the trappings that come with being a household name. Still, imagine if this great were with us, how instructive of a role model he would be for exposing the emptiness of fame in our modern world.

Next: Running for Your Life: What’s to Read?

Running for Your Life: After New Hampshire

As the kids communicate these days, here’s a text exchange with a bosom buddy that best conveys the After New Hampshire in my private world …

KN: Daily News editorial today takes to its fainting couch because Trump “dishonors the office he seeks with … gross vulgarisms.” I happen to agree with the sentiment, but I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to a sermon from the leading supplier of gross vulgarisms in the tristate area. Thank you for letting me vent.

LO: As to the Daily News, ’Tis the unhinged caterwauling of a dying beast.

KN: Unhinged Caterwauling of the Dying Beast: now there’s a death metal instrumental title for you!

LO: Let’s write it! Could be the unofficial anthem of the Clinton campaign.

KN: I know I said instrumental, but just as a warmup … Steinem, Albright, welcome to the eternal night, Albright, Steinem, screams of the damned delight ’em . . .

Icons of the feminist dawn, now yelling, “Damn kids, get off my lawn!

Ba da da da BAAAAA dum …

 Next: Running for Your Life: If the Great Were With Us Thursday