the sacred fount, reduced

“Gertrude Stein was a great reader. In novels, Henry James’s for instance, characters talk, and in their nuances lurk the subtlest intricacies of the author’s web. Imagine a text of a novel, say James’s The Sacred Fount (1901), from which everything has been extracted except the dialogue.”

(Guy Davenport, “Late Gertrude,” p. 189 in The Hunter Gracchus)

Following Guy Davenport’s suggestion, here’s a version of Henry James’s The Sacred Fount from which everything has been extracted except the dialogue. A print-on-demand version can be purchased at Lulu; or, download a PDF version for free.

may 1–may 15

Books

  • Buzz Poole, I Like to Keep My Troubles on the Windy Side of Things
  • Jerzy Kosinski, Steps
  • Elizabeth Smart, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
  • Diane Williams, It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature
  • Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life, trans. Johnny Lorenz
  • Clarice Lispector, Água Viva, trans. Stefan Tobler
  • Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G. H., trans. Idra Novey
  • Enrique Vila-Matas, Dublinesque, trans. Anne McLean & Rosalind Harvey

Films

  • Tiny Furniture, dir. Lena Dunham
  • The Fly, dir. David Cronenberg

Exhibits

  • Whitney Biennial
  • “Frank Stella: Black, Aluminum, Copper Paintings,” L & M Arts

april 16–april 30

Books

  • Harry Mathews, The Conversions
  • James McCourt, Wayfaring at Waverly in Silver Lake
  • Teju Cole, Open City
  • Eugene Lim, Fog & Car
  • Robert Kelly, Kill the Messenger
  • Robert Walser, The Walk, trans. Christopher Middleton & Susan Bernofsky

Films

  • Habemus Papam (We Have a Pope), directed by Nanni Moretti
  • Ruggles of Red Gap, dir. Leo McCarey
  • The Two Mrs. Carrolls, dir. Peter Godfrey
  • Marguerite de la nuit, dir. Claude Autant-Lara
  • The Sound of My Voice, dir. Zal Batmanglij

Exhibits

  • “Dürer and Beyond: Central European Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Met
  • “Naked before the Camera,” Met