January | 2011 | Frank Bures

Archive for January, 2011

Chris Jones on How to Be a Writer

Posted in Writers, Writing on January 26, 2011 by frankbures

Got to respect a guy who can write about his balls and his dad in the same issue. One of the best:

First off, a pro is necessarily getting paid to do what he does, and that’s a tough trick these days all on its own. But a pro is also defined by the scope and practice of his operation. A pro has sources. A pro knows how to spot a lie. A pro does the work. A pro gets it right. A pro knows how to hustle the corner, but he also knows his way around a paragraph. A pro does it all, and he does it all well, without vanity or fireworks. A pro doesn’t leave any holes or openings, in his soul most of all.

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Tony Judt on Shoddy Prose

Posted in Books, Words to live by, Writing on January 7, 2011 by frankbures

Tony Judt, from The Memory Chalet:

In “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell castigated contemporaries for using language to mystify rather than inform. His critique was directed at bad faith: people wrote poorly because they were trying to say something unclear or else deliberately prevaricating. Our problem, it seems to me, is different. Shoddy prose today bespeaks intellectual insecurity: we speak and write badly because we don’t feel confident in what we think and are reluctant to assert it unambiguously (“It’s only my opinion…”). Rather than suffering from the onset of “newspeak,” we risk the rise of “nospeak.”

You can also read the essay here.

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The Angry Catfish Bicycle and Coffee Bar

Posted in America, Clips on January 6, 2011 by frankbures

At a party a couple of years ago, a girl told Josh Klauck, “You look like a catfish. An angry catfish.” Klauck found the name so fitting, he built a bike shop around it. Angry Catfish Bicycle and Coffee Bar opened last January in the guts of an old hardware store in south Minneapolis. “I used to go to the bar next door,” says Klauck, “and always saw bikes locked to the awning. It was already a gathering place.”