Mimi Power and Magnifico: an author's blog

“Look, only a few people get to die peacefully in their sleep after a wonderful life. So that’s like not making the football team. There’s lots of things you don’t get to have. That’s probably one of them. Thank God, I consider myself lucky that I live after anesthetic. Can you imagine those days? ‘Sit down. Tuesday, we’re taking off your arm.’” --Albert Brooks in Judd Apatow's Sick in the Head Let’s be smart about this. You could spend the next year reading through the bestseller list on anger management, business, collaboration, creativity, living for the moment, marriage, mentorship, parenting, perseverance, rejection, self-help and the spiritual feeling that comes from writing. Or, you could find all that and more in Judd Apatow’s Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy . First released in 2015, this collection of conversations had its origins in the early 80s, when 15-year-old Apatow, a self-described “comedy geek”,  was interviewing up-and-coming c...

“Look, only a few people get to die peacefully in their sleep after a wonderful life. So that’s like not making the football team. There’s lots of things you don’t get to have. That’s probably one of them. Thank God, I consider myself lucky that I live after anesthetic. Can you imagine those days? ‘Sit down. Tuesday, we’re taking off your arm.’” --Albert Brooks in Judd Apatow's Sick in the Head Let’s be smart about this. You could spend the next year reading through the bestseller list on anger management, business, collaboration, creativity, living for the moment, marriage, mentorship, parenting, perseverance, rejection, self-help and the spiritual feeling that comes from writing. Or, you could find all that and more in Judd Apatow’s Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy . First released in 2015, this collection of conversations had its origins in the early 80s, when 15-year-old Apatow, a self-described “comedy geek”,  was interviewing up-and-coming co...

"I have the American dream — I had a dream of becoming a writer! I was little — not rich, or not anything really, but I did have this hope and faith and it kind of has come true for me. So I wouldn't say the American dream is all hokum. Not in my case, at least." —John Updike* “Writer’s and Company” recently aired a n encore presentation of Eleanor Wachtel’s 1996 interview with John Updike . Feeling remiss in never having read even one of Updike’s 60 books — two of them Pulitzer Prize-winners — I went in search of Rabbit, Run . I found Terrorist instead. Inside 18-year-old Ahmad Ashmawy Mully, something terrible is churning. On the surface, he is a high school senior. A solid student. He runs track every spring. And wears a crisp, white, buttoned up shirt every day that does nothing to conceal the contempt he feels for his classmates at Central High School in New Prospect, New Jersey. Through the lens of detachment, Ahmad observes—and is offended at...