Mirrors and windows

"Space cadet," Tim Connor All rights reserved


"Selfie with hole in the head," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Crossing Manhattan Bridge

"Crossing Manhattan Bridge," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Philip Roth: A searing blast of love

Philip Roth, one of America's greatest post-war novelists, has stopped writing novels. But he apparently gives interviews. What follows is part of an interview he gave to Daniel Sandstrom, cultural editor of the Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet. Roth is saying (writing, I think) why he has found the U.S. so hospitable to writers.

"In a place so vast, no single geographic center from which the writing originates. Anything but a homogeneous population, no basic national unity, no single national character, social calm utterly unknown, even the general obtuseness about literature, the inability of many citizens to read any of it with even minimal comprehension, confers a certain freedom. And surely the fact that writers really don’t mean a goddamn thing to nine-tenths of the population doesn’t hurt. It’s inebriating.

Very little truthfulness anywhere, antagonism everywhere, so much calculated to disgust, the gigantic hypocrisies, no holding fierce passions at bay, the ordinary viciousness you can see just by pressing the remote, explosive weapons in the hands of creeps, the gloomy tabulation of unspeakable violent events, the unceasing despoliation of the biosphere for profit, surveillance overkill that will come back to haunt us, great concentrations of wealth financing the most undemocratic malevolents around, science illiterates still fighting the Scopes trial 89 years on, economic inequities the size of the Ritz, indebtedness on everyone’s tail, families not knowing how bad things can get, money being squeezed out of every last thing — that frenzy — and (by no means new) government hardly by the people through representative democracy but rather by the great financial interests, the old American plutocracy worse than ever.

You have 300 million people on a continent 3,000 miles wide doing the best they can with their inexhaustible troubles. We are witnessing a new and benign admixture of races on a scale unknown since the malignancy of slavery. I could go on and on. It’s hard not to feel close to existence here. This is not some quiet little corner of the world."

Excerpted from the NY Times Book Review, March 16, 2014

Union Square

"Cold day, Union Square," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Instagram

To make instagram: Shoot picture with phone camera, process through phone app with standardized filter choices, then phone to your network. Share.


"My favorite shawarma shop," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Schoolday instructions," Tim Connor, All rights reserved


"Taking a call," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

http://instagram.com/