(Anna Atkins, Carix (America), ca. 1850, George Eastman House.)
Author Archives: dbv
april 1–15, 2013
Books
- Dennis Cooper, The Marbled Swarm
- Thomas Pletzinger, Funeral for a Dog, trans. Ross Benjamin
- B. S. Johnson, See the Old Lady Decently
- Dion Fortune, Psychic Self-Defense
- Charles Portis, Gringos
- Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece & Gambara, trans. Richard Howard
- Jack London, Martin Eden
- Avram Davidson, The Investigations of Avram Davidson
Films
- Spellbound, directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Exhibits
- “Photography and the American Civil War,” Met
from melville to london
“There London rented the clubhouse where his boyhood idol Robert Louis Stevenson had stayed and set out for Melville’s paradise of Happar. Tuberculosis, leprosy, and elephantiasis had decimated Melville’s noble warriors. The survivors were mostly freaks and monsters.”
(Andrew Sinclair, introduction to Jack London’s Martin Eden, pp. 11–12.)
chief of the undersea
(Mask of Ḱumugwe′ (Chief of the Undersea), ca. 1900, attributed to Bob Harris (Xi′xa′niyus), Kwakiutl, Vancouver Island, National Museum of the American Indian.)
proud flesh
“Whatever I’ve done, good, bad, or indifferent, I’ve done it and nothing can be added or substracted from it. There was an interesting article, a couple weeks ago in the New York Times magazine. It was called Ezra Pound’s Silence. To me it’s perfectly fascinating. Pound’s silence, to me, was better than the last work of Olson and William Carlos Williams. That late work was bad, it shouldn’t have happened. They should have stopped. Pound knew this about himself. He knew somehow, that the best thing he could do was to listen to his heartbeats, to sleep, to eat three meals a day. He sat at his desk and waited, and it was very beautiful . . . Olson incidentally used a phrase, I picked it up again in one of his poems the other day, a phrase that, it’s a term that fascinated me too, that I used in Genoa. It’s the term proud flesh. It’s the flesh that grows when you cut yourself. Your body produces, it’s almost cancer-like, your body overproduces to compensate, then finally reduces itself back. This is the kind of thing that I’m talking about.”
(Paul Metcalf interviewed by Russell Banks, Lillabulero 12 (Winter 1973), pp. 32–3.)
march 16–31, 2013
Books
- Franklin Bruno, The Accordian Repertoire
- Stanley Elkin, Early Elkin
- H. G. Wells The Island of Dr. Moreau
- Charles Portis, True Grit
- Charles Newman, New Axis
- Charles Newman, White Jazz
- Tom Whalen, Winter Coat
- Tom Whalen, Elongated Figures
- Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews
- Georges Perec, La Boutique obscure: 124 Dreams, trans. Daniel Levin Becker
- Georges Perec, The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise, trans. David Bellos
- Cordwainer Smith, You Will Never Be the Same
- J. G. Ballard, The Day of Forever
- Adolfo Bioy Casares & Silvina Ocampo, Where There’s Love, There’s Hate, trans. Suzanne Jill Levine & Jessica Ernst Powell
- Karen Green, Bough Down
Films
- Spring Breakers, directed by Harmony Korine
- Games, dir. Curtis Harrington
Exhibits
- “The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark,” Frick
- “Piero della Francesca in America,” Frick
- National Museum of the American Indian
- “Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase: An Homage,” Francis M. Naumann Fine Art
delay
“As writers who follow the call of the vocation and not the pursuit of wealth, our fate is a continuous search for pretexts to postpone the moment of putting the pen to paper.”
(Adolfo Bioy Casares & Silvina Ocampo, Where There’s Love, There’s Hate, trans. Suzanne Jill Levine & Jessica Ernst Powell, p. 90.)
repetition & attention
“ ‘You don’t gave to watch anything close anymore,’ he tells Dr. Onarga, at one appointment, “’cause it’ll always be repeated.’ ”
(Charles Newman, White Jazz (1984), p. 21.)
march 1–15, 2013
Books
- Jack London, The Iron Heel
- James Tiptree, Jr., Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
- Charles Fourier, The Hierarchies of Cuckoldry and Bankruptcy, trans. Geoffrey Longnecker
- René Daumal, Pataphysical Essays, trans. Thomas Vosteen
- Ursule Molinaro, Positions with White Roses
- Joanna Ruocco, The Mothering Coven
- Jenny Davidson, The Magic Circle
- Shawn Vestal, Godforsaken Idaho
Films
- 56 Up, directed by Michael Apted
february 15–28, 2013
Books
- Gertrude Stein, from The Making of Americans, edited by D. Sorensen
- William Gerhardie, The Polyglots
- Avram Davidson & Ward Moore, Joyleg
- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
- Charles Portis, Norwood
- Ellery Queen (Avram Davidson), And on the Eighth Day
- Ellery Queen (Avram Davidson), The Fourth Side of the Triangle
- Peter Hook, Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division
- Carl Van Vechten, The Tattooed Countess
Films
- White Zombie, directed by Victor Halperin
- Ring of Bright Water, dir. Jack Couffer
Exhibits
- “Dieter Roth. Björn Roth,” Hauser & Wirth
- “Suzanne Treister: Hexen 2.0,” PPOW
- “Giorgio Griffa: Fragments 1968–2012,” Casey Kaplan
- “Alighiero Boetti: La forza del centro,”, Gladstone Gallery
- “Nancy Spero: From Victimage to Liberation: Works from the 1980s & 1990s,” Galerie Lelong
- “Tam Van Tran: Leaves of Ore,” Ameringer McEnery Yohe