Ongoing Tumblr Account for Joan Didion

http://doodlingdidion.tumblr.com/

An artistic blogging medium like Tumblr deservese a little extra of my own art:

Storify: 2 Hour Rebecca Skloot Project

Who I am Following on ByLiner and Why

And now I have an account on ByLiner. Currently I follow eight authors, especially including these three:


Joan Didion - my muse of angst. What I have read from her ("Slouching Through Bethlehem essay collection through a Non-Fiction class, and most recently "Good-bye to All That") has touched me for her intimate confessions of insecurity. It's as though my own constant "nervous irritation," to borrow from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, is something she very well explains - and if she survives with it, becomes successful despite it, then maybe I can too. Maybe my anxiety can be my strength too - too much thinking at least makes one thoughtful. I need to read from her to study how she uses it and ignores it when writing, how she does it really.



Lorrie Moore - We were instructed to follow dissimilar writers, and I remembered that Lorrie Moore was much more lighthearted, with wicked humor. "How to Become a Writer" was an amazing read. I think my own writing lacks humor, because of my greater desire to appear "sensitive," but the humor I found in her writing seems liberating.



Paul Theroux - I looked up "Travel" writing on ByLiner, and thus found his name. I became intensely intrigued by the summaries of his articles, including one of Turkmenistan, which I had recently investigated for my internship. Furthermore, it seems he writes about other countries throughout Asia, which must have sprung from his experiences with the Peace Corps.. I still need to investigate him further. But I'm always curious of other cultures. And then it seems he has an essay on "love" of all things.. Also, I realized my two dissimilar writers were female, and I needed to find a male candidate.. But to find an author that has actually traveled the world and written about it very much intrigues me.


Other Writers I decided to follow include:

-Haruki Murakami - an author I learned about through Japanese classes. I read his translated fiction novel "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" which was very confusing, but thoughtful, regarding a passive man and a few confusing women. He also wrote about the saran gas attack in 1995 in Tokyo, to raise the voices of those who endured it. I read a Japanese essay by him, in class, and I liked his sense of humor.
-Colson Whitehead - an author I learned about through Nonfiction class! I like his humor also, and the angst, as I encountered in his poker piece.
-Ted Conover - the investigative journalist who inspired me in high school.
-Thomas Friedman - the investigative journalist who inspired my father as he began studying about the Middle East as a kind of intellectual hobby, within his general love of geography. I also have a good friend who is Syrian, and I should learn more about the region.

And here's my "Read it Later" list: http://readitlaterlist.com/unread, which includes:

-"Why I Hate 3-D" by Roger Ebert - I know he is very famous, and I came to realize that he's not a critic who is overly snide, as I feared, but good-humored, actually - even when he's snide.

-"On Change in India" by Siddartha Deb - I need to learn more about India, the land of my best friends, the land of Hindi, which I've been studying with increasing enthusiasm.

-"Twilight of the Vampires" by Teah Obreht - I need to learn more about vampires, with which I've been intrigued since high school, for the layers of mythos and pathos. Monsters are manifestations of our fears, and I think vampires are manifestations of our fears of ourselves.