Returning to Dorothy Allison for Inspiration in Explaining My Own "Coming to Writing"

"It was a rough beginning—my own shout of life against death, of shape and substance against silence and confusion. It was most of all my deep abiding desire to live fleshed and strengthened on the page, a way to tell the truth as a kind of magic not cheapened or distorted by a need to please any damn body at all. Without it, I cannot imagine my own life. Without it, I have no way to know who I am [...] Writing these stories is the only way I know to make sure of my ongoing decision to live, to set moment to moment a small piece of stubbornness against an ocean of ignorance and obliteration. "


--Dorothy Allison, “Deciding to Live” preface to the first edition of Trash

The Original Tea Partier: Pap Finn

Check out this interesting literary analysis from Seattle's The Stranger blog! The key is that the writer locates the origin of the contemporary "tea baggers" in arguments about race and class and distrust of the government that Twain was able to document as far back as the publication of Huck Finn. Pretty neat. Conclusion: "No new arguments ever come up in American culture, just old ones in new clothes."

Siouxsie And The Banshees - Cities In Dust

Becuz who wants to read, right? I do, I do.

But no one else does. So. Now, I tumbl.