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b729a71
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I don't need no Smith and Wesson, man, I got Merriam and Webster.
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reading
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Avi Steinberg |
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b5b2e0b
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Pimps make the best librarians.
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pimps
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Avi Steinberg |
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7ebe322
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I think you're more an archivist than a librarian," he said. He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful. "They like everything," he said, "gum wrappers as much as books." He said t..
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librarianship
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Avi Steinberg |
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3579b15
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Yet for quixotic reasons--namely, that I enjoyed writing obits--I had decided to scale back on articles about city life in order to write exclusively about the city's dead. For even less money. It was a strange and inexplicable career move.
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death
obituary
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Avi Steinberg |
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53e23eb
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I flipped to the author's photo in the Library of America edition of O'Connor's collected works, and forked it over. Solitary examined the photo. "Okay," she said, handing it back, "I'll read it." What in Flannery O'Connor's countenance met with Solitary's approval? "I dunno," she said. "She looks kind of busted up, y'know? She ain't too pretty. I trust her."
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Avi Steinberg |
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f6341b0
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In his eagerness to advance onto this new path, he was training himself to cook by simply pairing words. From his reading, he knew that the words balsamic vinegar went with the word asparagus even though he had never tasted either. He knew that rosemary went with chicken and with lemon, even though he confessed that he wouldn't recognize rosemary if he fell into a bush of it.
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Avi Steinberg |
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190ccd6
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but that didn't stop him from going to church every week, for almost twenty years now, kneeling and confessing to what he called "the sin of locking a human being in a cage."
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Avi Steinberg |
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ff50970
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He had no use for guns--these were for people who didn't know how to use words. Or, to quote him, "I don't need no Smith and Wesson, man, I got Merriam and Webster."
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Avi Steinberg |
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206b4cd
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Though, from my perspective, it was almost cheating to teach a guy whose idea of a love poem was "I wanna make love to you nice in your heart." Nearly any string of vowels and consonants would sing compared to that."
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Avi Steinberg |