Cops Beating UC Berkeley Students. In Video. Time to Judge The Quick and The Dead.

Dear CF,
I’m watching footage of the events of the UC Berkeley strike, which culminated in a student takeover of Wheeler Hall where I teach.
KTVU does a story on the strike, with footage of police beating students.
This video is disturbing: start at 1:30 or so if you’re in a rush. Watch at least through 3:45. The [...]

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UC Berkeley Strike in Photos: Time-Lapse

Today, as part of the UC strike, a group of about 50 students took over Wheeler Hall on the UC Berkeley campus to protest the layoffs of 38 ASFCME workers and a 32% hike in undergraduate tuition.  The building is surrounded by police, which in turn are surrounded by protesters (UPDATE 7:20 p.m.: who are [...]

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American Writers

“There exists a great politesse around women’s poetry,” Courtney Queeney writes, “and to write critically is, in some ways, to betray one’s feminine self (the part that’s supposed to blink a lot and sigh into the shadows when the menfolk start talking politics at the dinner [...]

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Great Pattern Changes

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Daniel Alarcón Pirated My Life

Dear CF,
Just got back from hearing Daniel Alarcón—author of War by Candlelight (which I’ve read) and Lost City Radio (which I haven’t, for reasons that will become apparent)—talk about book piracy in Peru. You’ve seen the stands, you’ve read your Calvino: the subject is the fast cheap reproduction of original books and the readers and [...]

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Why Don’t Fetuses Get Free Health Care?

It’s a curious feature of the Republican approach to reproduction that the fetus has the right to life but not to medical care*. The life belongs to the fetus, so the money required to bring that fetus to term—including the cost of the birth—should be calculated not as part of the “expense” of being a [...]

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The Incarnation

A lizard, Carla Fran?!! Is this your novel’s spirit animal, your word made flesh? I confess I find the idea of him terribly nice, although I’m sure it’s less poetic to have large lizards actually in a space that’s shared by your feet.
I have no lizards in my house. Some respectable spiders, an ailing basil [...]

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Where the Wild Things Are

Dear Millicent,
There is a giant lizard living in my office.  Last night I caught sight of the lizard lord: he is about two feet long (mostly tail) and a racer! This means I now do all my writing with my feet curled up onto my chair.   How does one catch a lizard?  My office (and [...]

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Writing Day 2!

Dear CF,
Aw man, I got goosebumps down my arm reading your last paragraph. Fuck it to the firecrackers INDEED! I am dutifully picturing you across from me in a magnificent be-turbaned haze. I just offered you some of my danish. You said you once smacked Joan Crawford for that. But it’s blackberry! I said. You [...]

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Hello Start! I Would Like Instant Discipline Now, Thanks.

Dear Millicent,
Your description of your party reminds me of how I feel on Facebook. Let’s place the party’s strange outcome under the heading “astrological event.”  It wasn’t you, it was the planets (and I also blame the zombies and werewolves).
As for novel month—-it’s November.  Let’s Do This.  I have gone so far as to actually [...]

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