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Gail Forrest's avatar

Well darlin' I look forward to your take on everything modern life. I write a scewed, advice column with some real advice but mostly aimed to make people laugh in these unfunny times. I also do standup and wrote the first funny book on menopause:Gonepausal. I hope you visit my world also. I just finished reading "The World According to Joan Didion which was a good read. I loved her. Kudos on your impressive career and can't wait to read your work over in Substack land!

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Mark Shields's avatar

Love your title too!

A note from the Paris Review:

"In the wake of Didion’s success, publishers have come to realize they can apply Yeats’s lines to pretty much any book that documents confusion and disarray. Thus Elyn Saks’s 2008 memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, concerning her bout with schizophrenia. Though these four words from Yeats surely resonate with Saks’s feelings, the “center” in question here isn’t the moral authority of the Western world, it’s one person’s sense of stability. The trend has held for art books (David Gulden’s photography collection The Centre Cannot Hold), politics (The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies), alternate history (American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold), popular history (A Blood-Dimmed Tide: The Battle of the Bulge by the Men Who Fought It), reportage (A Blood-Dimmed Tide: Dispatches from the Middle East), religion (The Second Coming: A Pre-Mortem on Western Civilization), international affairs (Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa), right-wing moral hectoring (Slouching Toward Gomorrah), memoir (Slouching Toward Adulthood), and even humor (Slouching Towards Kalamazoo; Woody Allen’s Mere Anarchy). It seems that for every cogent allusion (Northrop Frye’s Spiritus Mundi, anyone?) there are a dozen falcons that truly can’t hear the falconer."

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/07/no-slouch/

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Gillian Orr's avatar

Loved reading this, thanks for sharing! And this project is definitely a misapplication amounting to a tribute ha.

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Mark Shields's avatar

Aspiration or tribute, both fair game!

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Robert Walrod's avatar

And, before all of these, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

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Jess Edwards's avatar

This is Gorj - can’t wait to read more 💚

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Daniela Michelon's avatar

Love your Substack title! An ode to Didion more than Yeats, I would assume? It's such a good analogy to what is going on today. I think more and more the centre is not holding! ❤️ Sorry to sound pretentious, but I just adore Joan’s books, and when I find a fellow fan (assuming again), I get so happy! 🥹

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Gillian Orr's avatar

You've assumed correctly!

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Chris Prakoso's avatar

Welcome to the land of hope 😎 Hope you find your home here. 🙏🏽

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Henry Holland's avatar

Can’t wait. I promise not to hound you to “recommend” whatever I’m trying to flog that Friday.

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