Self-Described Media Obscurity Gets Still More Ink
Despite my fervent hopes we might have heard the last of Paulo Coelho, but no such luck: NYT reporter Alan Riding is the latest witness to Coelho’s constant moaning: “I am not in the United States what I am in France or Spain or Germany…I have never broken the barrier of the press. In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.” Riding’s headline suggests that Coelho’s “writing in a global language,” to which one might well respond: yeah, that of the lowest common denominator.
As was the case with Eleven Minutes last year, I did actually open a copy of The Zahir and try to read it, but this is pretty godawful stuff, folks. I mean, I’d sooner finish John Twelve Hawks’ The Traveler than read even one more chapter of Coelho…and I’d seriously consider picking up Lauren Slater’s short story collection again, too.
31 August 2005 | interviews |
The Spirit Doesn’t Wait for the Staircase
Dianne Sylvan is one of the most thoughtful spiritual writers I’ve read in a long time from any religious tradition, and certainly from the ranks of neopagan voices. It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since she debuted with The Circle Within, and I’m looking forward to doing more than just skim through my recently acquired galley of The Body Sacred, which is all about helping women to love their bodies as incarnations of the divine feminine. On her blog yesterday, Sylvan, who isn’t shy about her curvy figure, told a beautiful story about the perfect comeback to a thoughtless remark of the sort she hears all too often.
I’m not even going to quote from this, because the punchline is so perfect that you need to see the buildup just the way she presented it, with no more preparation than this.
30 August 2005 | uncategorized |
Our Endless and Proper Work is my new book with Belt Publishing about starting (and sticking to) a productive writing practice. 
