blogging – Samir Chopra

Barbara Tuchman Contra Hot Takes

Barbara Tuchman kicks off the preface to her Practicing History: Selected Essays (Ballantine Books, New York, 1981) by writing: It is surprising to find, on reviewing one’s past work, which are the pieces that seem to stand up and which are those that have wilted. The only rule I can discover as a determinant–and it is aContinue reading “Barbara Tuchman Contra Hot Takes”

An Amateurish And Embarrassing Oversight

Recently, much to my dismay, I noticed that on page 2 of my book Eye on Cricket: Reflections on the Great Game there are a couple of serious problems. There, the following passages appear:

Paying Attention To The Muses’ Visits

In The Year of Magical Thinking–a book on which I will write a bit more anon–Joan Didion quotes her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, as saying that having a notebook handy–to write down a thought, an idea, filed away for future reference and deployment–was the difference between being able to write and not. There is muchContinue reading “Paying Attention To The Muses’ Visits”

Learning From Freud: Addiction, Distraction, Schedules

In An Anatomy of an Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted and The Miracle Drug Cocaine, Howard Markel writes: At some point in every addict’s life comes the moment when what started as a recreational escape devolves into an endless reserve of negative physical, emotional, and social consequences. Those seeking recovery today call this drug-induced nadir a “bottom.”…TheContinue reading “Learning From Freud: Addiction, Distraction, Schedules”

It’s Not Like The Good Ol’ Days Here

Writing on this blog has become increasingly onerous. For the first year of this blog (which I put online in November 2011), I was in between book projects, and was able to blog almost every day (I was also keen to establish a writing habit and stuck quite rigorously to a schedule); then, my daughterContinue reading “It’s Not Like The Good Ol’ Days Here”

On A Minor Fast

I went on a little fast today. It lasted seven hours. But before you snicker at my pompous announcement of insignificant renunciation, do consider that I did not give up food or drink for that length of time. (Indeed, I made myself a four-egg omelette in that period and ate it with gusto.) Rather, IContinue reading “On A Minor Fast”

Bagdikian on the Media’s Corporate Values and Overreliance on Official Sources

I’ve owned Ben Bagdikian‘s The Media Monopoly for some twenty years, and have only just managed to get around to reading it. The edition I own dates back to 1987; its analysis of the growing monopolies in media ownership and their pernicious effect on political life in the US ring truer than ever before. As IContinue reading “Bagdikian on the Media’s Corporate Values and Overreliance on Official Sources”

The Curious Irony of Procrastination

Do writers procrastinate more than other people? I wouldn’t know for sure just because I have no idea how much procrastination counts as the norm and what depths practitioners of other trades sink to. But I procrastinate a great deal. (Thank you for indulging me in my description of myself as a ‘writer’; if youContinue reading “The Curious Irony of Procrastination”

The Never-To-Be-Returned-To Perennial Draft

My email client shows eighty-two drafts resident in its capacious folders; my WordPress dashboard shows thirty-seven; and a quick search through various document folders on my desktop machine shows several dozen others. They are monuments and gravestones and white flags of surrender; they are signposts of intention, evidence of procrastination run amok; they are bitterContinue reading “The Never-To-Be-Returned-To Perennial Draft”