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First Page of an Early Draft of Blood Meridian
Nice article at Slate on Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, touching on how “all the way to galley proof in 1984, McCarthy whittled Blood Meridian down into the lean nightmare we now know. He cut...
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Why I’m Not Particularly Interested in Reading a DFW Biography
(Think about it — the personal lives of most people who spend 14 hours a day sitting there alone, reading and writing, are not going to be thrill rides to hear about.) –David Foster Wallace on literary...
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Eleven Authors Who Were Also Veterans of War
Eleven Authors Who Were Also Veterans of War 1. Stendahl (Napoleonic Wars) 2. Ambrose Bierce (Union Army, American Civil War) 3. Erich Maria Remarque (German Army, WWI) 4. George Orwell (Republican...
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Judge Holden Holds Forth on War (Blood Meridian)
From Chapter XVII of Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian— They grew gaunted and lank under the white suns of those days and their hollow burnedout eyes were like those of noctambulants surprised by...
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Emily Dickinson’s Cocoanut Cake Recipe
Emily Dickinson’s recipe for cocoanut cake, via Tori Avey at the The History Kitchen. Avey’s post is great—she guides the reader through making the cake, includes photos of the process, and even...
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Frederic Remington Letter
From the LOC: Two champions of the old West share their common interest in this illustrated letter from sculptor, illustrator, and painter Frederic Remington to writer Owen Wister. Both originally...
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David Simon on The Walking Dead . . . And Newtown
David Simon, the writer and creator behind The Wire, Treme, and Generation Kill, tries to tackle the tragic Newtown slayings in a post at his blog. There’s a lot of anger in the piece—rightfully so—but...
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Thomas Pynchon Reviews Oakley Hall’s Novel Warlock
Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880′s is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the...
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Everyday Reading: Poetry and Popular Culture in America (Book Acquired,...
I got a little lax with these “books acquired” posts at the end of last year—chalk it up to end of semester deadlines and meetings, family-oriented holiday stuff, and an awful illness. Anyway– Mike...
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“Cinema Is a Foreign Language”— Leos Carax
Hello, I’m Leos Carax, director of foreign-language films. I’ve been making foreign-language films my whole life. Foreign-language films are made all over the world, of course, except in America. In...
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Gertrude Stein on Football
In a 1934 radio interview, Gertrude Stein talks American football: INTERVIEWER: You saw the Yale-Dartmouth game a week ago Saturday didn’t you? Did you understand that in the American way or the...
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“T.S. Eliot”— Ezra Pound
“T.S. Eliot” by Ezra Pound (from Instigations) Il n’y a de livres que ceux où un écrivain s’est raconté lui-même en racontant les mœurs de ses contemporains—leurs rêves, leurs vanités, leurs amours, et...
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Teju Cole on America’s Reader in Chief
Read Teju Cole’s essay “A Reader’s War,” which tries to square Obama’s reputation as a man “widely read in philosophy, literature, and history” with the White House’s policies of drone warfare. From...
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“The drama’s done” (Moby-Dick)
The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck. It so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of...
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“Nam-Bok the Unveracious”— Jack London
“Nam-Bok the Unveracious” by Jack London “A Bidarka, is it not so! Look! a bidarka, and one man who drives clumsily with a paddle!” Old Bask-Wah-Wan rose to her knees, trembling with weakness and...
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New Books from Akashic (Books Acquired, 2.15.2013)
A passel of unsolicited reader copies arrived in the middle of February, including a trio of strange birds from Akashic Books. Preston L. Allen’s Every Boy Should Have a Man seems especially (and...
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Still Points North (Book Acquired, 3.02.2013)
Still Points North is Leigh Newman’s new memoir about growing up in Alaska. Publisher Random House’s blurb: Part adventure story, part love story, part homecoming, Still Points North is a page-turning...
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See The Corner, David Simon’s Dress Rehearsal for The Wire
Tagged: Baltimore, Corner, David Mills, David Simon, Ed Burns, HBO, Simon, United States
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Michael Kimball Talks to Biblioklept About Writing Life Stories on Postcards
Michael Kimball’s latest book Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (On a Postcard) had its genesis in a performance piece at the Transmodern Performance Festival a few years back: Michael interviewed...
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RIP Chinua Achebe
RIP Chinua Achebe, 1930-2013 Nigerian author Chinua Achebe died today at the age 82. I will never forget the first time I read Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s famous novel that mixes elements of magical...
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