July 18, 2008
devils food
A friend of mine recently told me that he'd just finished some volume of Proust. And the other day I watched Super Nanny. Madeleine or naughty chair?! Anyways, I responded immediately with, man, I haven't read anything in the longest time.
Except I was reading something. I was in the middle of Marco Pierre White's memoir Devil in the Kitchen. Obviously it didn't make much of an impact on me.
I find I often have problems with memoirs. The main reason is that there is usually a great reason for writing a work about the person. The problem is that the writing and editing can fail to live up to the material. And then the book, in turn, fails to live.
Marco Pierre White is a superfamous, influential British chef and one of, if not the, originator of that bad boy chef persona in and out of the kitchen. Without him, there'd be no Gordon Ramsay, no Hell's Kitchen, no publicity for cooking mavericks. The book takes you through his lonely youth and passion-fueled career and various business and personal relationships. Though there are interesting insights into working in the restaurant business littered throughout and you get the sense that White is struggling through some tough personal memories, it all seems to fall kind of flat and generic -- the very opposite of his culinary creations and his own singular character. There's little of the personal analysis or shared introspection that Anthony Bourdain brings to the table (but perhaps his writing skills are better than his cookery?) in his food-world books.
In the photos that are included in the middle, MPW looks much happier, smiling, fishing and with his wife and kids. At least he seems much more content and at peace with himself.
Posted by janet at 1:20 PM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2008
favorite things
While this space was lying fallow and empty of the usual loop-the-loop mess that is my typings, I was doing other stuff. SOUNDS INTERESTING! Maybe that just means the loopies stayed in my brain instead of out in the wilderness of the internets. The loopiness is a zero sum game. No, maybe more an imaginary numbers game. Lose lose.
See? i. This is what you have been missing. Not much.
So I thought I'd make a list of some things that I've enjoyed during the past few months. Because I don't really have anything to talk about anyway. And also, I keep making mental notes of things that I'm hating and it's just so easy that I figure I need an exercise in positive thinking.
Book! I'm reading again! Isn't this lovely?! One recent read was Mavis Gallant's Varieties of Exile, a collection of short stories, which is not as heavy as that title seems to me at the moment. I am hearting NYRB! That is not so difficult.
I've also gone into Barnes & Noble a few times to gaze at the books but not buy them just yet, because I have a gift card and you know, I want to buy the bestest books ever. (Any recs???) So for now, I'm just eyeing them all. But sometimes they are just very pretty. Is it me or are books prettier nowadays? Wow, that sounded inane. A few weeks ago, I was walking with a friend and actually asked, "What is that white stuff that is falling from the sky?" It looked like styrofoam and I didn't feel cold. HOW COULD IT HAVE BEEN SNOW??? Um, back to books...I forget how I came across this link, but I do love Peter Mendelsund's fabulous book cover designs. He works for Knopf. What a funny collection of consonants. Knopf.
Even though it was started back in November, the NPR (mostly) music blog Monitor Mix written by Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney fame has finally entered the blogroll (I'll have a cinnamon bun, chocolate croissant and a blogroll... hahahahaha.. undercooked!). She's a great, exploring writer and pretty damn funny at times in a totally understated way, whether writing about being at SXSW in her latest post, liveblogging the Grammys or making her own Maxim-style "pre"-reviews. Sometimes she writes about music that I really have little to no familiarity with, but that's OK! Cuz she's grrrrreat. Also, hadn't listened to S-K in awhile, and why did I forget that they totally rock??
One last thing for today, but oh so definitely not least, is actually also NPR-related. Oh the many hearts I have for Radiolab. This jewel of a show is actually a few years old, though with very few episodes a season because they take so long to produce and put together. It explores various science-y/big topic matters like Morality or Sleep or Stress, weaving together interviews and exposition and sound clips along with the musings and banter of the two hosts Jad Abumrad (hello radio voice crush!) and Robert Krulwich. The show is constructed a bit like you're discovering things along with the hosts and it feels like a little journey into something big! and important! The show's one of those things that I am not devouring greedily but savoring so, so slowly, picking and choosing among the archives and relishing the fact that there are more episodes to hear.
Posted by janet at 3:35 PM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2007
happy birthday or whatever
Recently I went one night to the U.S Open, and there was one really great shot and then I found myself waiting. For the replay. You know, because all great things should be repeated for our pleasure. Oh, isn't this the goal of human existence. And then I felt pretty dumb.
Anyways, books are not like tennis! You can replay them right away! From the comfort of your bed! And while eating some chocolate! Go books!
So I came upon Annie Choi through a series of links — that internet gets me everytime. First, there was this open letter to architects, which I thought was funny, but not as much as it would be if I actually had architect friends, not architect enemies. But I enjoyed her devil-may-care spirit, a certain je ne sais quoi (or, je ne sais choi? hohohoho), and then started reading her blog, and THEN, I read her book, Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee and Other Family Disasters.
I found myself evincing that human emotion called laughter. Like, many times. And then when I was done, I went back and read it again. There might have been chocolate involved. The book addresses all the touchstones and honored traditions in the palette of korean-american life — food, church, grades, karaoke, golf, engrish, motherland, inescapable mother, anger, misunderstanding. Just throw all those things together and you get a freaking kimchi smoothie. Gross, right?
But A.C. writes with the kind of humor and snarkitude where poignancy and insight are subtle and natural, with a certain depth. Characters, especially her mom, are brought to vivid, hilarious life, and she manages to shed light on cultural context, from different points of view, through her stories, instead of as her stories - if that makes any sense to you. It probably doesn't. It was refreshing to read this after this book (which I am still sorting my feelings, thoughts, frustrations out on).
I recommend this to anybody who likes to laugh, who knows a Korean mother, or is human. 75% human is okay too.
Did you notice I couldn't, like, call her "Choi" ("Choi writes with blahlblahblah)? Just feels funny. And I have an annoying habit of typing "Choir" when it's not my name. I have such an ego. Annie Choi is no relation of mine (well maybe super distant like when rice was currency), though perhaps she is related to the Janet Choi from California whose friends are getting married and having birthday parties and baby showers and sending me evites and photos because they have the wrong e-mail address.
Here is a PDF of the first chapter thing. If this were an album, it would be called, "the title track."
Posted by janet at 3:43 PM | Comments (2)
August 29, 2006
Franzen is Kakutani'd
I often check out of the NYT book reviews and head to the crossword instead, to fill out three letter words. I have also never read any of Jonathan Franzen's work. Nor do I feel inclined, even in the waiting room of hell, to pick up his new memoir, which the infamous Michiko calls, "an odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass". Ouch! But, there are plenty of other things to read, no?
Posted by janet at 12:19 PM | Comments (3)
February 17, 2006
500 books in 52 weeks: #2 The Accidental
At SAT tutoring this past weekend, we ran into some trouble with the term "allusion" in our course of studying confusing word pairs – in this case, Allusion v. Illusion. It's like the Marbury v. Madison of vocabulary review! Ohhhh no sense, no sense. Anyways, my kids are a tad fobby so I had some trouble coming up with examples of specific literary allusions.
Allusions, they're kinda neat; they're sort of like literary (hyper)links 'cept uhhh ... harder. Instead of the easy clicking, you have to be knowledgeable enough to make those smrt neurons a synaps-in'.
Here's where we get to the meat of the burger: #2 of 500, Ali Smith's The Accidental, finalist for the 2005 Booker (and we love the bookers, not the hookers), because this book is dizzying with allusions. The neurons will tire and say, please! We need a hot chocolate break! Everything from Plato's allegory of the cave to the Little House on the Prairie TV show and toothy Melissa Gilbert to old movies and the Sound of Music and literary theory and Beyoncé and beyond is referenced. In fact, this novel feels startingly contemporary, with a vague backdrop of the Iraq war and an overall ADD-addled postmodern (is that term passé? whatever) treatment. It's strange because we are (I am) so used to literature inhabiting either or both a timeless and historical context and this sort of 'here and now'-ness plus the improvisational style brought blogs and the internet and ritalin to mind, not necessarily (but sometimes) in a negative light.
So, The Accidental is a book that requires patience. Smith riffs on various writerly formats, mixing and matching, and generally mashing it all up. We're introduced to one of the characters in an insouciant Q&A. We whiz by clichés and self-reflexive comment on said clichés. We try not to skim through the section told through variation/disintegration of the formal sonnet. And I have no idea why I'm lapsing into the royal "we".
Despite this grabbag of literary tricks, I just had to tell myself a couple times to be patient. I did want to see more 'regular' prose or more judicious use of all those references and frankly, a little less tidy-ness of plot, a little less writerly self-consciousness, because some of the writing is just so, so good by itself, with convincing points of view and narration and scattered spikes of humor, the kind that's actually funny.
This is a story of a family. Two kids (Smith writes these particularly well), Astrid and Magnus, and their parents, Eve and Michael offer us windows into their lives. Individually and as a family, they are not floating along but in some unhealthy stasis. They are becoming stuck in the mud: Astrid has some serious growing pains, Magnus some dangerous self loathing, Eve is a frustrated writer and Michael is yet another professor who has affairs with his female students (is that all professors, always male, in literature do?). Brother-sister-mother-father-daughter-son combinations all not so close, not so good.
This begins to change with the unexplained arrival of the character of our mysterious 'accidental' – Amber (who has many other names) who claims her car has broken down. Nobody, including the reader, really knows or will get to know who she is, but she remains at the house, and her radical interactions with everybody (surprise, surprise) slowly start the family boat bobbing along the river again and these family members start to finally WAKE UP and grow into, for lack of a better description, palatable people.
Amber is supposed to be a strange character but we're left in a bog of questions, flailing arms and synapses and asking, well geez, who is she? Why is she staying there? Why aren't all the characters more curious and asking the same questions? Amber is the precipitate of all the action without providing much self or substance of her own. (Did I use 'precipitate' right there?) Is she a collective hallucination (I hate this explanation for plots)? Am I taking the character too realistically? Cuz that question sounds ridiculous. This is actually the kind of character might work better in a movie, because we see less explicitly into people's heads. Or maybe my brain's fizzling.
But the conceit, or whatever, of Amber and her role as the title - accidental - is kind of neat. The excellent Michael Shaub (from bookslut offers an explanation of 'accidental', the noun, in a SF Chronicle review: a bird who somehow doesn't belong in a place, from winds or whatever weather, is called a vagrant or accidental. But actually, what makes more sense to me is the musical term, "accidental" – a note that doesn't belong in the key of a piece, but changes the whole tone/nature/character of the sound. Amber's the brightening, enrichening accidental of this book's key but we don't know whether she's a c-sharp or e-flat or what. But the resulting music's kinda nice.
Posted by janet at 12:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 8, 2006
500 books in 52 weeks: #1 In a Free State
Man, I've got a lot of catching up to do. I'm on book #4 (weak, weak I know) but I'm too busy attending to my wicked stepsisters and crying amid the cinders and grinding old glass slippers into stepsisters' food to write on a website. Chuh. Please. The internet is not where fairy tales are made.
If I were clever witty and wise, I'd attempt to do something like the Guardian's Digested Read which goes over books in 400 words, usually snarkily, amusingly, and trippingly. I'm in a trio of words kind of mood. How very Catholic. Anyways, I'm lazy, tired, and sleepy.
So here's looking back at what started the year off:
#1: In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul (1971)
"In a Free State," winner of the Booker, is actually the title of a novella and it comes with two short stories and the prologue and epilogue from Naipaul's travel journals. Let's reduce his work, shall we? Conradian, postcolonialism, and outsiders. The actual piece "In a Free State" is basically a car trip by two Britishers through some part of Africa. It cuts to the politically incorrect until you're unsure what, if anything, is correct. Heart of darkness does that to ya. Here, you are not quite sure who to side with. Not that you should have to choose, but it's still an uncomfortable place for a reader to be. I found his tense prose and his characters rather unsettling, no one very sympathetic in particular, suggesting that we stop kidding ourselves in asking "why can't we get along?"
Perhaps it was merely the subject matter but maybe also the atmospheres evoked that reminded me of Claire Denis's 1988 movie Chocolat. In any case, this is prose that is challenging, not in style, but in the questions it poses of us now, most generally, in our treatment of others, and how this plays in human histories.
Posted by janet at 12:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 29, 2006
500 books in 52 weeks
Inspired by the initial here LHB and YP, I started January off thinking of doing this '52 books in 52 weeks' thing. Being an avid reader from birth (hahahahahaha and a little gross), or from youth, let's say, and living a block away from the public library, at twelve, I once could have read like 30 books in a week, biyatch. Or something ridiculous. Even through college, I read a lot both for classes and otherwise, you know, when I wasn't getting trizashed at the frizat hizzouse. God, I gotta stop doing that. Talking like that, I mean - not the getting trizashed. (Ha-ha-ha! I am such a joker!)
Now, in slightly more aged terms, I am no fine wine, no stinky cheese. My reading has fallen not simply but precipitously. First of all, there's Job (not biblical), and other gold like TV (fool's), and Netflix, and People (well, sometimes). And I find that my reading skills have diminished. I'm less focused, too skimmy and impatient and near-ADD-addled, and plus, I can't sit down for extended periods just to read. There's random subway time, random lunch hours, too much randomness, not enough hours.
But with this project, the lightbulb. I was like Edison. Eureka! Actually that was Archimedes. 7th grade science really paid off. Ok, anyways, lightbulb! Maybe I will read more! And errrr learn things!! And you know, those people on those READ posters at the library are always smiling and happy and ... enriched! I, too, want to be smiling, happy and enriched.
Still, since I'm a cowardly lion - oh wizard give me courage! oh! i already have it! - I feel that I won't make 52 in 52, ratio 1:1. So if I say.. FIVE HUNDRED in 52 weeks, no matter what number I get up to, I will say, well dagnabbit, I tried my durndest and besides 500 is just crazy talk anyhow. So, everybody wins! Silly? Maybe. Crazy talk? Sure.
And unbeknownst to you, I've already begun. #1 was VS Naipaul's In a Free State. #2 was Ali Smith's The Accidental and I'm working on #3 which is Camus The Stranger (en anglais). So stick around chickadees, I am entrusting upon myself the duty of writing at least a little about them (proof!) and the rest of the line, all the way up until (500-n).
Posted by janet at 11:51 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
October 16, 2005
suburban libraries
I think the New York Public Libraryis one of the greatest things ever. I mean, those lions? You can't find those in other places unless they're in saddened, dwarf-sized fashions guarding without so much as a roar but more like a "meh", the great suburban two-garaged two-and-a-half kidded house behind them. Rowr.
The NYPL has tons of everything ever and specialized branches and great events and exhibitions. But living in this apple-cheeked city means that there's usually about 10,000 people wanting the same book or whatever that you do, especially if it's a hyped-up, much talked-about release. Or if it's remotely popular. After a few exhausting trips to different library branches, I gave up and started reserving things and having them delivered to a branch real close to work. I usually forget about them so when I get the notice in my email, it's like a little present.
But I browsed the ol' hometown library today with much pleasure. I borrowed some Ishiguro and Coetzee and Chekhov. Even though the computerized catalogue was down, I was able to browse the few stacks without afterwards feeling like I'd run a marathon and was in need of some orange juice and bacon or saying excuse me squeezing by the many other oh so literate people. I helped out a mother and her daughter find Lovely Bones which is by Alice Sebold, not Mary Higgins Clark or Wally Lamb, as her mother haphazardly guessed. The teen daughter was like, "Seriously ma, what have you been reading?"
Leaving somewhat triumphant with my small stack o' books, I looked back at the library's non-personality, scattered with sullen-looking teenagers studying and parents blissed out reading and indian and chinese newspapers and the same librarians who have worked there since my childhood, one of who(m?) wearily waved me on when I promptly set off the alarm at the exit.
Posted by janet at 12:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 24, 2005
persepolis
This introduction to Marjane Satrapi's explanation for writing her graphic novel, Persepolis starts with this assumption: Chances are that if you are an American you know very little about the 1979 Iranian Revolution. They got me there... even given that I, as myself and perhaps as an American, know very little about every other thing under the sun (dilettante! the accusatory cry!). I think we may have skimmed over the topic in some international-ly labelled class in college but that's about it. But despite war and censorship, there has been a great amount of great work from Iranian artists on all fronts – film, literature, music, visual. I am at least just scratching the surface.
Graphic novels, by their nature, can combine a lot of elements and genres into a powerful punch of a piece. Satrapi, herself, comments that writing one resembles working on a movie. In that respect, it's what you might call 'easy reading' (pictures!) on that impossible thing called Life; the reading/looking goes relatively quickly but remains simultaneously enjoyable and deep and affecting. Persepolis tells the story of Satrapi's childhood, growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution and a war with Iraq. You know it's going to be good by the end of the first page, where little girls are playing and fussing with their newly acquired veils -- "Ooh, I'm the monster of darkness!" My favorite interchanges are between Marjane and God; once they have a bit of a tiff and God tries to lighten things up mumbling, "The weather's going to be nice tomorrow." Hilarious when you see it, ok?
Persepolis has even become a standard text at West Point, where she gave a lecture recently. I'm in the middle of Persepolis 2 which follows Marjane to Austria for boarding school and adolescent years and finding it a tiny bit less enjoyable because c'mon, Cute little girl vs Teenage Angst? Still, undeniably great.
You can see some excerpts from the first one here.
Interviews with Satrapi from Powells and bookslut.
I've also started Strange Times, My Dear, an anthology of short stories, excerpts, and poems by over fifty writers, put together by PEN. More when I'm further in. But in the meantimes, the Strand has it about half the list price.
Posted by janet at 12:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 10, 2005
words words words and not a book to read
This article about Random House makes me sad-face.
For a house that made its name publishing James Joyce and, more recently, E.L. Doctorow and Norman Mailer, Random House has had an unusual last year. Its two best-known, best-selling authors in 2004 were Donald Trump and American Idol's Clay Aiken.
Posted by janet at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 17, 2004
America the Bookiful
Jon Stewart wants to be my friend? What? Man, I have so many on the list already. Do you think he'll apply for waiting list? (No, Stanford, I don't still hold a grudge, really...) I digress. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show team are mad funny and smrt. I don't have cable, and I know this.
Actually, because I don't have that newfangled cable business, I thought I might as well get America (The Book). Even the Times book review people thought it was funny, and who knew they had a sense of humor?
My friend, Jon Stewart, will be at the Union Square Barnes & Noble on Oct. 8th to discuss and sign things. Probably not body parts though.
The Union Square Barnes & Noble has lots of good "events" in the next coming weeks. Art Spiegelman, Howard Dean (sans RAAHRRRR?), Maya Angelou, Daniel Liebeskind, and Roddy Doyle are all dropping by. There must be some Food Network thing going on cuz that channel's denizens are all stopping by and have books as well. Alton Brown, Tony Bourdain (so great!), Jamie Oliver (so cute but it's just cuz he's british!), Rachel Ray (some find her irritating to the point of inviting murder. I don't find her that bad. But quite the perky one. Too much perkiness invites at least a maiming.), and Nigella Lawson (is she still on the food network? all the guys want her ... and her food.)
Food Network, the only other reason to get cable.
Posted by janet at 12:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 8, 2004
in the flesh
It's always interesting to find out what authors look and sound like, apart from their words. This past wednesday, I attended "State of Emergency:Unconventional Readings" held by PEN, which included readings by 15 literary and arty luminaries -- among them Don DeLillo, Ariel Dorfman, Eve Ensler, Francine Prose -- of works by other writers, commenting leftily on the current state of the state.
I had expected Don DeLillo to look much beefier. But anyways, Salman Rushdie, the current president of PEN, was charming and funny. I hear from people who have attended his readings/appearances that this happens even if you think Rushdie is a bit of an ass. So, the event was a tiny bit of "The Rushdie Show" but you totally went along with it. Cuz he's so charmant. And he is the president. (Tangent: This fall, you will be able to hear Haroun and the Sea of Stories opera based on Rushdie's children's book by the same title at the New York City Opera.
It was kind of cool to see all these great people all in one place. A bit inspiring, even if it was all preaching-to-the-choir. I haven't read much poetry at all, but I really do love hearing it. Poetry-readings have a much too hippie reputation, but most of it is written to be heard. Look, there's Captain Obvious again. So that's another project to add to my ever-growing list, to get familiar with more poetry...
Village Voice coverage of the reading
Check here for coverage, digital video, and transcripts of the readings.
Learn about PEN's Campaign for Core Freedoms, and sign the statement to restore reader privacy and call for a review of the USA Patriot Act.
Posted by janet at 1:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 12, 2004
Summer Reading
My tutoree has all these summer reading books that I haven't heard of, except for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn . What happened to good ol' Animal Farm and Watership Down ?? Talking animals. Now that's good readin'.
I recently just ordered delivery of the NYT so I don't pay a dollar every day on my way to work. But really, a lot of times I end up reading the arts section, first page, op-eds, and attempting the crossword puzzle (I know today is only Monday but it seemed disarmingly easy. Look up there! There's my head full of air! Don't worry, my lack of skill will come back home when it gets hungry). I didn't even rifle through the rest of the sections, so I wouldn't have noticed the NYT "Great Summer Read" insert but for good ol' Gothamist.
They're serializing four novels, starting with The Great Gatsby . You get excerpts every day except Sunday, so by then, you've finished a book. It's kind of a cool idea. If it catches on or has a life beyond the summer, it'll be interesting, all hearkening back to the printed pages of yore.
I remember Gatsby being pretty high up on my i-like-this high school reading list. One of the most frustrating, and arguably beautiful, things about books though, is that not only are there so many out there for the reading, your views/opinions of them change as you age and grow. Okay, that's not exactly a subtle observation. But I'm always a little surprised when books, like people, spring higher or fall down from you're expecting since you last met. I'm hoping I will enjoy Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man much more the second, older time around.
Though, now that I think about it, everything's sorta like that. Expectations, the meeting of them, and the gaps. Mind the gap.
But, no matter what, I won't like roller coasters. That's right. I'm a party pooper. You go have fun on your death machine. I'll go win an unhuggable toy animal stuffed with newspaper.
Posted by janet at 11:54 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 16, 2004
woolf and bed-ridden
"Why did you get sick?" my father asks me irritably, after spending the afternoon doing some kind of strenuous (for him) work outside on the lawn so that it looks exactly the same. What kind of question is that? My mother dismisses me with a "pfft, it's just allergies, where's your high-paying job" look. Oh parents. Oh I need to move out of the house last week.
Anyways, I veer off track already, as I am bound, by my inner-workings of (il)logic, to do. Have recently just finished Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and quite possibly am in love with it. For me, Woolf is one of those authors that took a couple of tries before I started getting/enjoying what she was doing.
I enjoyed Mrs. Dalloway but To the Lighthouse will take its quiet place among my favorites of books.
Shifting perspectives between the heads of the Ramsey family and their guests, the 'plot' here is all psychological/mental and not traditional 'action.' Writing with stream of consciousness and a kind of poetry that just flows , Woolf seems so excellently to capture inner workings of the mind. The insecurities, how we deal with each other and how we can never really know others because one's own mind and judgments are so enclosed and complex and paradoxical.
My Tylenol-cold sponsored typing cannot express the beauty of this book. It's so damn human. Check it out.
My very exciting life is also occupied by wanting to read Chang-rae Lee's latest book, Aloft . He hangs out with Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton and gets bothered by snooty club members. I always thought that Toni Morrison would be mad scary, but people tell me that isn't so. I think I may have made that all up. Ummmm yeah, yay for Asian people who can write!
Quick de-generation into meaninglessness.
Posted by janet at 11:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 28, 2004
fizziks
Now, I am not one to be all sciencey. Physics in high school is a vague dream, mutterings about velocity and mass. But somehow, I keep coming across this guy, Brian Greene, (good work you PR agent marketing people squad) and I'm kind of intrigued. He has become known for being incredibly accessible while relaying some crazy physics ... 'mediagenic' as it were. He writes about string theory, or unified theory, and I'm fascinated by the implications for reality, time, and perspective that seem to be involved.
This interview from The Morning News is a great glimpse into the subject matter and the passion (not the mel kind) which Greene has that seems so contagious.
The NYT review of The Fabric of the Cosmos .
And if you're still actually there, the Op-Ed piece he wrote for the times for New Years.
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