Michael Meyer

Author of "A Dirty, Filthy Book" (Penguin) + four more; Pitt prof/Honors; Oxford fellow; Peace Corps China; Berlin Prize; on the trail of Carl von Ossietzky.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

Digging in the stacks unearths unexpected things, but never expected the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize to be one of them. Awarded to a journalist whose bravery in exposing corrupt and lying leaders led to a concentration camp, and his death. #NobelPeacePrize

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

@davidclowery The flaxen light
Off of the dying wheat
Your rye whiskey mouth
And your dandelion teeth

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

@JoyceCarolOates I teach Creative Writing at Pitt; for 14 years now I’ve begun Fall with ‘Moby Dick.’ Undergrads will read big books with a teacher who pushes them. I teach another class - Missed Masterpieces - where they choose classics they’ve yet to read. Wonderful fun. Gen Z is all right.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

@KaiserKuo Recently visited Okinawa, with about/slightly more personnel than in S Korea. No talk of drawdowns, as in Europe, right? 维持现状. Still: Wish US-China peer-to-peer exchanges were ramping back up - Fulbright, et al. Some things are too important to be left to politicians.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

@UberFacts Read the full story here: https://t.co/RQa2AAqplf

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

@KaiserKuo I came here for some big-brain analogies drawn from 三国演义. Where we at? (Also: weird to read press coverage devoid of wedged-in 成语, or references to historical events at the places Trump visited. #老头儿）

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

My Paris Review interview with Georges is a career highlight. What a life.

https://t.co/W9WvV9iirO

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

Mourning my friend and agent Georges Borchardt, who died at the age of 97. Georges escaped the Nazis, made “Waiting for Godot” his first sale (followed by “Night,” and books by multiple future Nobel laureates), and fought fiercely, with a wry wit, for his writers. I’ll miss him.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

On a Thomas Mann pilgrimage to the Lido and see that today “Death in Venice” means a lovely public notice board for funerals. Unlike Mann’s 53-year-old protagonist, the average age of these Italian departures was 86, and they’ll be missed. (Now reading "The Magic Mountain": A+)

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

Morning in Venice. The unrealized ice skating potential is strong.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

News you can use: Being a Guggenheim fellow does *not* entitle you to use the loo here without an entrance ticket.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

🇸🇲 San Marino, pop. 34,402, including one Michelin-starred chef - Luigi Sartini - who makes the best pasta I’ve ever had (a seafood tagliatelle) at his two-table deli in Borgo Maggiore. One bowl for the hike up, one bowl as a reward after the hike down.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

A film waiting to be made: the life of Nathan Cassuto, Florence rabbi, who with priests hid Jewish children in local monasteries. His own sons survived the war. His wife asked to be sent to Auschwitz with him. She survived, but was killed in 1948 in the Hadassah Convoy Massacre.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

Nailed it.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

Uffizi, Florence — The boy always carries a book. Here it’s Adam Hochschild’s story of the British conscientious objectors who tried to stop WWI, “To End All Wars.” So glad we never gave this kid a phone.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

Add Florence to the Stolperstein project. Enrica Calabresi was a zoologist purged from the city’s university in 1938. She stayed to teach Jewish children barred from public schools. In 1944, before her deportation to Auschwitz, she swallowed the poison she carried for years.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

A short walk in Milan takes you past Roman ruins, a Renaissance masterpiece, a Napoleon-financed cathedral, the birthplace of Fascism, and TikTok’s Italy hq, plus 2026 Winter Olympics venues.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

At Milano Centrale, which Frank Lloyd Wright declared the world’s most beautiful train station. On the inside, and despite its history, he may still be correct (sorry, Leipzig).

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

The 2020 darkening of the blue in the French Tricolore really makes the flag pop against Paris's Lutetian limestone buildings.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

George Orwell's Paris boarding house in "Down and Out" was at number 6 of what he termed Rue du Coq d'Or." No plaque on his residence, unlike Hemingway's home from "A Moveable Feast," over at 74 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.

[Michael Meyer @meyerwriter]

Annie Besant's former home/Theosophy HQ has been refurbished into eight flats at 17-19 Avenue Road on the northern edge of the Regent's Park, London. All that's missing is her Blue Plaque, which should be moved from her short-term let on Colby Road, south of the Thames.