(Rogier van der Weyden, St. Luke Drawing the Virgin, ca. 1435–1440, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)
the very notion of jackson heights
“Flitting along the beds, Miss Hancock reached a patch, as yet practically unravished, before which a couple of dames were discussing a forthcoming divorce – an obstinate wife, it seemed, that refused to reside in Jackson Heights. . . . ‘my dear, she swears nothing on God’s earth will make her mount there; she quite hates the neighbourhood; the very notion of Jackson Heights makes her dizzy!’ ”
(Ronald Firbank, The New Rythum and Other Pieces, p. 100.)
noted
- Nic Rapold on creepy kids in the movies.
- Charles Bernstein on Charles Olson’s “The Kingfishers” in Sibila (includes link to audio of Olson reading the poem).
- John Crowley points out Nabokov reading Part 2, Chapter 35 of Lolita.
- Audio of David Foster Wallace at Wisconsin Public Radio
- Helen Vendler on Wallace Stevens.
- Sharon Butler gives a quick review to Chris Bertholf’s show in Hudson.
firbank’s juvenilia
“From a fragment of a short story written at the age of about twelve:
Mrs Keston put the dog in its basket, tidid her hair before a mirror, langwidley sat down and calved a chicken.
[A girl at a boarding school told to eat up the underdone beef she had left on her plate replies:]
‘I have quite enough blood in my family without going to a bullock for more.’ ”
(Ronald Firbank, The New Rythum and Other Pieces, p. 115.)
104 east 26th street
august 10–august 19
Books
- Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show
- Martin Duberman, Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community
- Franz Kafka, Amerika: The Missing Person, trans. Mark Harman
Films
- District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp
a syllogism worked out
(Frontispiece to Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic, published by MacMillan and Co., Ltd., 1897. Online version here.)
noted
- Louis Adamic’s article on the founding of Black Mountain College can be found in the April 1936 issue of Harper’s (w/ rebuttal by Bernard DeVoto in the same issue).
- Portraits of students and faculty at Black Mountain College by Hazel Larsen Archer (at the Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center).
- At the California Literary Review, an interview with Paul Collins on, among other things, the past, present, and future relationship of publishing and the marketplace.
- Marjorie Welish on “In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976” at the New York Observer.
62: a model kit
(Julio Cortázar, 62: A Model Kit, Pantheon, 1962. Design by Kenneth Miyamoto.)
noted
- J. M. Coetzee on mathematics and poetry at Notices of the AMS, recommending especially the concrete poetry of Carl Andre and Emmett Williams. (See also Coetzee reading from Summertime at the NYRB podcast.)
- László Krasznahorkai has a short story in The Guardian.
- At Jacket, Douglas Piccinnini on John Ashbery in Paris with special reference to Locus Solus; also see Declan Spring on the rediscovery of Alvin Levin.
- Tom La Farge reviews The noulipian Analects at EXPLORINGfictions with reference to Duchamp and Roussel.
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