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Levi Stahl

@levistahl.bsky.social

4.5K followers 1.2K following 11K posts

Editor of The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany and The Daily Sherlock Holmes. Marketing Director at the University of Chicago Press. Board member of the Uptown People’s Law Center.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · Aug 25

I started a newsletter, friends.

this-not-that.ghost.io

This, Not That

Reccomending some good books, movies, music, and more

this-not-that.ghost.io

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 2h

Issue 4 of my newsletter, this one a commonplace book issue full of quotes about parents and children, went out yesterday. Come for one of Waugh’s children calling him a sadist, stay for a comedian reflecting on making out in cemeteries as a teen.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · Aug 25

I started a newsletter, friends.

this-not-that.ghost.io

This, Not That

Reccomending some good books, movies, music, and more

this-not-that.ghost.io

3 8

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 6h

Good morning, friends!

A panel from a Peanuts comic strip showing Charlie Brown and Linus leaning on a wall, chins resting on their hands, elbows propped on the wall. Charlie Brown is saying, “So much for feeling good.”

3 27

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 13h

We could have a World Series between two teams that have never won it.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 13h

Yeah, the minute Horton went down the path got incredibly hard. Nothing to be ashamed of here.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 14h

Go win the World Series for the Midwest, Milwaukee.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 16h

Play ball. Let’s go, Cubs.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 18h

T. S. Eliot getting in some particle physics.

Lines from the poem “Burnt Norton”:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor
fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance
is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from
nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still
point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 21h

Saw my first juncos of the fall just now at the lakefront.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Delayed a few days by baseball, Issue 4, The Begats, is out now. A raft of quotes from my commonplace book about parents and children.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · Aug 25

I started a newsletter, friends.

this-not-that.ghost.io

This, Not That

Reccomending some good books, movies, music, and more

this-not-that.ghost.io

2 5

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

He was the kind of dog who woke up every morning wondering what he could do for his country and never what his country could do for him.

—Ann Patchett, New Yorker

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

It’s a Getty photo (Michael Reeves), rather than a staff photographer, but still: This is a good one, Sun-Times.

The back page of today’s Sun-Times, which features a full-page photo of Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong standing in front of a row of the humanoid sausages that race at the Milwaukee ballpark.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

So much Heraclitus in that line.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Is there a reason? Like, I know it’s true, but what is it about “No DMs” that leads that specific type of poster to put it in their bio? Do we understand what claim it’s trying to make?

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Time is a frenemy.

—T. S. Eliot

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Insane.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

At this point my relationship to Eliot’s Four Quartets feels almost mystical. I’ve been reading them for years, and I still couldn’t confidently say what some lines mean. But there is a power to them that is always there for me, a forced stillness, contemplation, reflection unlike anything else.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Just made it two. This may have been a mistake, but winter is coming and who knows when I might need 1000 demanding pages of fiction?

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Distracted from distraction by distraction.

—T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

We have one one our block that is like “Attack dog on premises. Not responsible for injury or death.” and I’m like, that ain’t the way the law works, bro.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

One very vital effect of the air-raids is this blurring of the future. There is a tendency for people’s whole outlook to be foreshortened, so that life exists from day to day.

—Mass Observation report

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

A headline from today’s New York Times:

A New 'Cats' Will Come To Broadway

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

One gets the impression, throughout the period, that there were a great many ideas floating about whose sole value was to console, and occupy the time of, those who had them.

—Peter Ackroyd, on the early war years

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious.

—T. S. Eliot, from “East Coker”

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Better than the other way around, I guess.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Good morning, friends!

A detail of a panel from an Avengers comic showing Captain America. He’s saying, “Be quiet, Ben. His ranting’s for our benefit. He’s leading up to a story. His kind always does.”