Rachel Toor's Blog, page 11

Running and My Dead Mother

From the June issue of Running Times.

our collective alienation

Expressed on a bumper sticker: "A PBS mind in a Fox News world."

En francais

Just got my copy of the most recent Runner's World-France. There I am. In French. Email me if you want a PDF version. (My French isn't good enough anymore to know if the translation makes me sound dumber or smarter.) But still, c'est vachement chouette to be in there.

Play Freebird, man

Got a lovely email from a professor of English at Yale this morning about my latest Chronicle column. He reminded me that being a rock star wouldn't be so great after all, and quoted Joni Mitchell (from Miles of Aisle, which I pretty much listened to non-stop freshman year):

"That's one thing that's always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating i...

A New PR

The amazing thing about this column (from the May Running Times) is that I had people writing to yell at me for defending Dean Karnazes, and just as many upset because they thought I was criticizing him. Dean himself wrote to the editor to say that his sponsors were angry because (he said) they said it was a "scathing and biased article." Make me wonder about literacy levels.

Fortunately, my very smart editor wrote back a reply that I wish I could post here, saying that he has turned down many...

Now I'm a Real Writing Professor

My first foray into the world of small literary journals.

"Riding an Elephant" has been published in Ascent.

My Hero, GO

This latest Chronicle column is an homage to (or a rip-off of) George Orwell. If you haven't read "Politics and the English Language" do yourself a favor.

Abbey's Country

While I don't love Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, I can't argue that it's not an important and well-written book. He starts, "This is the best place on earth."

He might be right.

I just spent a week in the canyonlands of southern Utah, staying in Castle Valley, a suburb of Moab, and hiking every day under the desert sun. A good springy break.

Diets for Prose

Here's this month's Chronicle column on slimming down your manuscript.

The Happiest of Valentine's Days

Valentine's Day is pretty much a set-up for failure. Pity the men who have been made miserable--often for weeks in advance--by this mandated (and yes, commercialized) expression of syrupy sentiment.

Pity the man who is involved with me on the fourteenth day of February. He wouldn't have expected that a cynical, demanding bitch would be expecting a Valentine's Day present. (He will have been made aware of this, and directed to an essay I wrote explaining that the best Valentine's Day present I ...