Public Posts Bellingham, WA Bellingham, WA

Karl Ove Knausgaard, Norwegian writer, born in Oslo, Norway in 1968. His first book, a 1998 novel tilted , Ute av verden (“Out of the World”), became the first debut novel to win the Norwegian Critics’ Prize. Knausgaard’s second book, titled A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven, (also published as A Time for Everything). His six volume series, autobiographical novel, Min kamp (My Strugle), published starting in 2009 became a best seller in Norway and its English-language publication gathered a large following.

Source:  Karl Ove Knausgaard, Min kamp 1

The Room was written October 7, 2021
the Room 2 follows.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist and poet. He was a key figure in Spanish language and universal literature.

Euripides (480 - 406 BC) Born in the Salamis Island, Greece. He was one of the great Athenian playwrights and poets. Of his 90 plays,18 have survived the centuries since he wrote them. More

"A human being is a living constellation of contradictions, mostly opaque to itself. “Inward secret creatures,” Iris Murdoch called us in reckoning with the blind spots of our self-knowledge"... More at The Marginalian ➜

"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

The quote is from David Foster Wallace 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College. You can see the  Speech Video or you can read the full transcription

If nothing else, Wallace speech is timeless, telling us about "the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:  This is Water"

In 2015, Time Magazine called Wallace speech the Greatest Commencement Speech of All Time and highlighted 5 Takeaways. 

David Wallace (1962 - 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace's 1996 novel "Infinite Jest " was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. His posthumous novel, "The Pale King" (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012. The Los Angeles Times's David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years". Wallace grew up in Illinois and attended Amherst College. He taught English at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. After struggling with depression for many years, he died by suicide in 2008, at age 46.

Voltaire - (1694-1778)  François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plume Voltaire. was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state. He was one of the greatest of all French writers.

Stendhal,  (1783 – 1842), Marie-Henri Beyle known by his nom de plume Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. He is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his characters' psychology and considered one of the early and foremost practitioners of realism. Among his novels novels are Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839) A self-proclaimed egotist, he coined the same characteristic in his characters' "Beylism". 

Jorge Luis Borges'  (August 24, 1899–June 14, 1986) in “Borges and I” — his classic parable of selfhood, exploring the divide between private person and public persona that each of us must live with and live into. It appears in Labyrinths (public library) — a collection of Borges’s stories, essays, parables, and other writings, originally published in 1962  More at The Marginalian ➜ 

"A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of “the great aloneness which knows not what is far and what is near, nor what is small nor great." Read more

 "Friendship is the sunshine of life — the quiet radiance that makes our lives not only livable but worth living. (This is why we must use the utmost care in how we wield the word friend".... Read more at the Marginalian

"In The Story of Ferdinand (public library), a gentle-souled young misfit bull sits out the perpetual head-butting by which his peers hone their bull-skills, choosing instead to smell the flowers under his favorite cork tree in solitude. His mother, at first worried about his bullness, recognizes her son’s difference and trusts that he would find his way" And so he does..... Read more