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Philip Graham

Philip Graham

Philip Graham, a Professor Emeritus of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is the author of seven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the story collections The Art of the Knock and Interior Design, and a collection of travel essays, The Moon, Come to Earth: Dispatches from Lisbon. He is also the co-author, with his wife, anthropologist Alma Gottlieb, of two memoirs of Africa, Parallel Worlds and Braided Worlds. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Washington Post Magazine, North American Review, Paris Review, Missouri Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. A co-founder and fiction/nonfiction editor of the literary/arts journal Ninth Letter, he is currently the Editor-at-Large for the journal’s website (www.ninthletter.com). Email: p-graham [at] illinois.edu

Website: https://www.philipgraham.net/

Confessions of an Accordion Addict

Posted on Monday, Mar 1, 2021 1:10AMMonday, March 1, 2021 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham Whenever I discover a band that sports an accordion in the lineup, I’m ready to listen. But this wasn’t always so. It all goes back to the mid-1960s, those days of my mid-adolescence, when my father’s favorite cousin, who we called our “aunt” May, came to visit nearly every weekend. The year…

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Some Songs from a Fallen Empire

Posted on Monday, Feb 1, 2021 1:45AMMonday, February 1, 2021 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham I’ve long been partial to Portuguese culture, so when Portugal transferred its last colonial holding, Macau, back to Chinese rule in 1999 , a friend surprised me with his marveling reaction: “Portugal had an empire? Who knew?” Perhaps his reaction shouldn’t have surprised me. In the United States, steeped as we are…

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My Fan Notes

Posted on Monday, Jan 4, 2021 1:35AMMonday, January 4, 2021 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham In the early months of 1966, whenever a familiar look of boredom settled in my mother’s eyes at the thought of cooking, I’d suggest, “Why don’t we go out for pizza?” She always agreed. Our pizzeria of choice was conveniently located on a one-block strip mall less than a mile away, between…

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The Maze of Words and Music

Posted on Monday, Dec 7, 2020 1:15AMMonday, December 7, 2020 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham Back in 1971, I couldn’t have predicted that the release of Joni Mitchell’s fourth album, Blue, would mark the beginning of the end of a friendship. During my college years, Donald and I had bonded over a love of literature and a shared ambition to become, some day, actual writers. While I…

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Like Love: A Conversation with Michele Morano

Posted on Monday, Nov 23, 2020 1:15AMWednesday, December 16, 2020 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham Michele Morano’s first collection of essays, Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain, is a classic of travel literature that I have taught several times, to the great pleasure of over a decade’s worth of students. Now she has bested the power of that excellent book with a new collection of essays,…

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Songs that Sing the Interior Life

Posted on Monday, Nov 9, 2020 1:25AMMonday, November 9, 2020 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham Now that a deranged president’s toxic presence will finally—finally!—begin to occupy increasingly smaller tracts of our inner lives, these new days might offer an ideal occasion to celebrate songs that sing of the singular mental spaces hidden inside us all—songs that can help re-acquaint us with ourselves. You might say that all songs,…

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My Own House of Pedal Steel Guitar

Posted on Monday, Oct 12, 2020 1:40AMMonday, October 12, 2020 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham FRONT PORCH Tucked away in my mind is a secret neighborhood, with a winding street plan that arranges all the music that I have come to love. It’s a sprawling, noisy place, block after block of obscure or popular songs, odd genres or unusual instruments that I have listened to over a…

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How Do You Play a Nyckelharpa?

Posted on Monday, Sep 14, 2020 1:25AMMonday, September 14, 2020 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham I had never before wandered through Tower Records in downtown Chicago, yet it felt familiar. Why not? Every store in the corporate chain was a similar gleaming cathedral of CD and vinyl excess, multistoried with escalators and elevators, and brimfuls of such a wide selection that, once you entered, you’d find it…

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Nothing Else Sounds Quite Like This

Posted on Monday, Aug 17, 2020 1:15AMSaturday, August 22, 2020 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham I serve as the family cook as well as the family DJ, so no dinner party preparation is complete without a small stack of CDs waiting for guests to arrive. When the doorbell rings and my wife Alma walks to the front door to greet our earliest guests, I idle the burners…

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Thank You, Secret Music Benefactor

Posted on Monday, Jul 20, 2020 1:45AMMonday, July 20, 2020 by Philip Graham

by Philip Graham Although my love of music goes back to the glory days of the long-playing vinyl album, I’ve embraced all the succeeding platform incarnations, from tapes to CDs to downloading to streaming (well, not so much streaming—shame on you, Spotify, for disappearing musicians’ royalties down to the teeniest fraction of a penny).  But…

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Recent Comments on 3QD

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  • PhilipGraham Well, THAT was a rewarding search. It turns out Rufus Harley recorded a bagpipes jazz version of “Eight Miles High,” one of my favorite songs by...

    Confessions of an Accordion Addict ·  Friday, March 5, 2021

  • PhilipGraham I know! There’s jazz violin (which I love), jazz harp (Alice Coltrane and more), jazz harmonica (which we now all know is but a small one quarter...

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  • Bill Benzon Thanks for this, Philip. Yes, I heard Lawrence Welk in my youth. Now that I think of it, it was schizy experience. The music itself seemed pretty...

    Confessions of an Accordion Addict ·  Thursday, March 4, 2021

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  • Mike W Wouldn't this create massive levels of micro-plastic pollution?

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  • Michael Liss I hesitate to reply....

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  • Ofinfinitejest . You will never read a better or more insightful philosophical essay than this one. His concern about why we may well not want to create artificial...

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  • Brooks Riley And a few hours after I posted that comment above, an ad for sheet music appeared on an internet article I was reading. . . (cue music for The...

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  • Brooks Riley Kitty Carlisle was the Merry Widow in a 1943 Broadway production. A marvelous English-language version. As a child, I used to lip-synch in front of...

    Confessions of an Accordion Addict ·  Wednesday, March 3, 2021

  • Michael Liss The WSJ is reporting this morning that Alphabet, parent company of Google, said it plans next year to stop using or investing in tracking technologies...

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  • Sue Plenty of things have tested positive to the PCR test. That's why it's unfit for purpose. Look, here's an epidemic it misdiagnosed earlier:...

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  • Michael Liss Brooks, to your point, the algorithm now seems to think I want a concealed carry holster. Unless it it has a deeper insight into my needs than my...

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  • Jochen Szangolies Very interesting argument. I like the 'tools' picture---I have occasionally thought in terms of interfaces: our attempts at conceptualizing the world...

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  • PhilipGraham Thank you, Dave. A real compliment, as you have two of the best ears out there.

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  • Sally Benzon Excellent question. Hospital administrators and insurance companies have much more data to draw from in their decisions about hospital management,...

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  • Bill Benzon I’ve been listening to these clips again because, well, she’s just so damn good. One thing I noticed is that, not only does she employ a range...

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  • Michael Liss Passing this one on to close friend in Baltimore. He won't agree with the politics, but he'll enjoy the local color.

    Epilog: Peace and Horror ·  Tuesday, March 2, 2021

  • David Jauss Another beaut, Philip!

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  • Jim Harrison George Soros' theory of market behavior amounts to an application of Girard's central concept of mimetic rivalry to high finance.

    Chatting With René Girard ·  Tuesday, March 2, 2021

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