Doctorow

"Writing teachers invariably tell students, Write about what you know. That’s, of course, what you have to do, but on the other hand, how do you know what you know until you’ve written it? Writing is knowing. What did Kafka know? The insurance business? So that kind of advice is foolish, because it presumes that you have to go out to a war to be able to do war. Well, some do and some don’t. I’ve had very little experience in my life. In fact, I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad."

-- E. L. Doctorow at The Paris Review

The Cold

"I can't take that cold no more. For me to feel good, I gotta see the sun," Pop says to Victor, talking on the phone.

Pop and I are different in that respect. Because of my unbalanced eyes, the sun is uncomfortable for me. I don't like the cold of a South Dakota winter, but I kind of like having to wear a light jacket even indoors. I prefer it cooler than warmer. A nip of chill is alright. I might not mind feeling sweaty during a heavy bout of passionate sex with a hottie, but, otherwise, I don't want to sweat. I have to admit that I do like San Antonio for its winters. It would be absolutely perfect if we could get a light powdering of snow a few times in the winter months, but, on the other hand, maybe this might mean a little too much chill, in which case I might be willing to forgo the picturesque beauty of the snow and keep the bare winters of San Antonio intact.

Camus and Sartre

As Sartre drifts into the Soviet camp, believing that there is no effective alternative to overcome Western bourgeois evil, Camus catches flack for his insistence on a third way, for he sees that totalitarianism is the true evil.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Camus, having been accused of complicity with bourgeois society, lashed out at [all Communist thinkers] who sought to “dominate the world in the name of a future justice.” Theirs was a complicity with murder, and theirs would be the victory of the slaughterhouse: “Those who pretend to know everything and settle everything finish by killing everything.”

-- Ronald Aronson, “Camus and Sartre”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jane Kenyon

And I would think, hanging out the baby’s
shirts and sleepers, and cranking the pulley
away from me, how it would be
to change lives with someone,
like the woman who came after us
in the checkout, thin, with lots of rings
on her hands, who looked us over openly.

Things would have been different
if I hadn’t let Bob climb on top of me
for ninety seconds in 1979.
It was raining lightly in the state park
and so we were alone. The charcoal fire
hissed as the first drops fell….
In ninety seconds we made this life—

a trailer on a windy hill, dangerous jobs
in the woods or night work at the packing plant;
Roy, Kimberly, Bobby; too much in the hamper,
never enough in the bank.

-- “At the IGA: Franklin, New Hampshire” by Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)

This is only the bottom half of the poem. The link will take you to the whole show. I found the first stanzas too confusing.