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mcgranaghan.bsky.social
Writer, Reader, Teacher, Student www.maureenmcgranaghan.com
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"Friendship, popularly represented as something simple and straightforward--in contrast with love--is perhaps no less complicated, requiring equally mysterious nourishment..." The key is it requires nourishment as much as any other relationship but often gets deprioritized. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 20 hours ago • 2 comments

"Like everyone else of his kind he was writing a play, an undertaking that progressed never further than the opening pages of the First Act." I wonder if there is still wide inclination to write plays in Britain; in America, he'd be writing a novel (and in LA, a screenplay). #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 20 hours ago • 1 comment

"The General bade me discourse fair words to you, sir, anent traffic circuits." I'm liking Liddament more and more. But then Greening, with his charmingly outdated schoolboy slang: badly wounded and dying in hospital...? We can only hope Nick was misinformed. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

"'He talked about Trollope--and Balzac.' 'The authors?' 'I was tempted to reply 'No--the generals,' but discretion prevailed." Admirable, Nick. Hard to resist that one. 🤣 #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Today I spent time reflecting on Langston Hughes’ words. I recommend reading or rereading his works. Don’t forget that we are not alone in this moment. We have the strength & lessons of our ancestors to pull us through. Gird yourself for the days to come because we’ve got work to do.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

"...by the nature of things he can only be a son to her-a better son than her own, I fear-and in any case living with Norman in a cottage must be infinitely preferable to Buster in a castle..." Stringham's mother has never been devoted to him, nor have any of these fathers. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

With each successive appearance, Stringham seems ever more humiliated. And yet, he doesn't admit humiliation. Biggs thinks he "needs taking down a peg or two." He's been taken down several but seems impassive. Hmm. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

I Would Follow This Poem to Hell and Back www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

"Widmerpool's face had gone dark red...as painful to watch as the time when Budd had hit him between the eyes full-pitch with an overripe banana; or...when Barbara Goring poured sugar over his head at a ball." The humbling annals of Widmerpool--which haven't humbled him. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Choderlos de Laclos, Lermontov, Svevo... I have to study Nick's reading list. Of these three, I've only read Svevo, thanks to APS Together. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

"Good morning...here's a sparrow for your cat" is a brilliant way to offer up a sacrificial lamb to your bosses. will be incorporating it into my office routine. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Ah, Derrick and Eric rival the fishcake fiasco for humor. Anxious lest they meet a junior officer's eye, "each would uninterruptedly gaze into the other's face across the table with all the fixedness of a newly engaged couple..." And then their exchange! 🤣 #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Nick recognizes that "to share the faint but perceptible inner satisfaction of being included, however obscurely, within the armed forces in time of war," he must take what comes. Meanwhile he's missing the early life of his child entirely. :( #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

"...but in general the situation remained capable of considerable improvement before being regarded as the least satisfactory." Nick's euphemistic (or at least understated) assessment of ongoing catastrophe. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

"An assistant, bent, elderly, bearded...bore the greatcoat out of a secret recess in the shadows and reverently invested me within its double-breasted, brass-buttoned, stiffly pleated khaki folds." A ritual. Nick robes for war. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 13 days ago • 2 comments

"I saw I was now in Widmerpool's power." Well, that's a grim ending if ever there was one. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

"'Goodbye, Idwal, and good luck.' Kedward hastily shook my hand, then rushed off to the scene of the butter robbery..." Kedward's first crisis as company commander! Meanwhile, Nick has to sign off on the disposal of rotten galantine as his last duty. Vigny had it right. #anthonypowelltogether

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment