April 2012
42 posts
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“Mum and Celine fired the imagination of the city. Within a fortnight, the...”
– The Sofa · Meanjin
Terrific story by Michael McGirr, up at the Meanjin website.
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“When I’m having trouble writing something, I often close the document and...”
– Section 9 of “Life Is Short: Art is Shorter” by David Shields. From the Los Angeles Review of Books.
This essay has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. And there are plenty of other bits worth quoting, so hop to it.
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“Each film in the trilogy explores some central concept: if Metropolitan is about...”
– Whit Stillman and the art of the courteous comedy | Film | The Guardian
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“I am often writing, but my walk made me really feel like writing in a way I...”
– So Why Am I Blogging? In which I don’t answer that question. :Daisy Fried
From Harriet the Blog at the Poetry Foundation
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Giramondo launch, Anguli Ma: A Gothic Tale by Chi...
Anguli Ma is the central figure in a traditional Buddhist folktale, a deranged killer who wears his victims’ fingers in a garland around his neck. Chi Vu presents him as a menacing abattoir worker who carries bloody chunks of meat home to his lodgings in plastic bags, in this suburban Gothic tale set in 1980s Melbourne, when the flight of Vietnamese refugees to Australia was at its height.
The...
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“Gregory O’Brien
Love poem
Houses are likened to shoeboxes but...”
– The Manchester Review, issue 8, March 2012.
Via the International Institute of Modern Letters (@modernletters) on Twitter, today.
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Ted Hughes's brother to publish memoir | Books |... →
Ted and I, by Gerald Hughes, is due this autumn from The Robson Press. Publisher Jeremy Robson, a poet who gave readings with Ted Hughes, acquired the book after Ted Hughes’s daughter Frieda mentioned that her uncle had written a memoir about his upbringing in the Yorkshire village of Mytholmroyd.
“Frieda and I were having a long lunch, and she mentioned that her uncle had written a...
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Amazon at the London Book Fair | Melville House... →
Some very frank criticism of Amazon is being circulated at the LBF, as reported by Dennis Johnson from independent publisher Melville House:
Today’s hot story, in any event, was about the massive number of people from Amazon stationed not at the company’s booth but quietly working the floor in a giant disinformation and recruitment effort — or, as some saw it, an intimidation campaign. One of...
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“I want to thank the court, in the person of your honour,” Cohen told an LA...”
– hi spirits: Leonard Cohen’s poetic thanks as former manager and lover is jailed for harassment
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Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears – review | Books |... →
A short review in the Guardian on the UK release of Foal’s Bread. (My review for The Ember is here.)
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Metropolitan (1990) - News →
A rather nifty service from IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) I’ve just stumbled upon (forgive the internet pun.) Here be ninety news articles about Whit Stillman’s films… media clipping services, anyone? This goes back to 2008, and I am assuming IMDB Pro provides even more depth.
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“Clay Shirky:
In this case, reading is moving from a ‘cold’ to a...”
– This is taken from what seems to be a three-way email interview (if it was longer, where is the rest please? good stuff.)
Remember to click through the + signs at the ends of paragraphs to get the whole discussion.
“what Do You Think Marshall McLuhan Would Have Said About Ebooks? how Do They...
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those who write of ordinary people: Anne Tyler...
Anne Tyler’s work is reviewed in the Guardian prior to the release of her latest book, The Beginner’s Goodbye. A rare interview with Lisa Allardice also discusses the men in her novels and her writing process, and opens with a fine salute to The Wire, set as it is on home turf:
If you were to pop by Anne Tyler’s house in leafy Roland Park, Baltimore, on a Tuesday afternoon, you...
“In the p. p. [prose poem] a field of vision is represented, sometimes...”
– Definition of a prose poem from the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
Via the Prose-Poem Project’s website (‘Learn More’, side menu).
Thanks to Andrew Burke of Hi Spirits for the link.
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“I have become accustomed to trying to find things for free online when...”
– The Note on my Door: Counterintuitive digital media assignments
A great story about teaching media skills in the digital age, from Professor Greg Downey of the University of Madison-Wisconsin.
Thanks to Jessamyn West for the link, and, as she notes, have a look at the librarians’ comments.
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“Compared to the shaped charges contrived by versifiers, even the best prose is...”
– The Fire of Life by Richard Rorty - Poetryfoundation.org.
Via Nigel Warburton’s blog, Philosophy Bites.
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Digital Collections - Manuscripts - Series 2:... →
All the Aussies know about this, via the Wheeler Centre on Twitter. So today, it’s Tumblr’s turn.
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Anne Enright meets the Guardian book club –... →
Here’s a podcast with Anne Enright and John Mullan at the Guardian about The Forgotten Waltz, with some interesting remarks right at the end by Enright about the Irish readers, whom she describes as amazing, but ‘entirely silent’ (at around 21.20)
The Irish readership is entirely silent…then there are the critics and commentators, who are involved in their own...
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“(Jane Smiley rereads National Velvet by Enid Bagnold for the Guardian):
In...”
– National Velvet by Enid Bagnold – rereading
I do remember thinking this book was rather dour and unusual, reading it as a teenager.
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Harper Lee's sister gives glimpses of reclusive... →
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Ebook readers growing, but print still "dominates"... →
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Fate took him away but love drew him back →
Which is more affecting when you engage with the resources at this link? the story on the page, or the video?
I can’t decide. At first I thought the story I encountered spread across two pages of the Saturday Age was unparalleled. But then I listened to the people…
Maybe Saroo’s mother tips the balance, reminding me of St. Augustine’s mother (“Surely the child who...
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“For most book collectors – and there seem to be fewer and fewer of them –...”
– A new chapter for rare book collecting | Books | guardian.co.uk
Rick Gekoski tells us that the treasure hunt is over, or at the very least, evolving.
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“When she began her blog in 2009, Qualey hoped she would bring Arabic literature...”
– What Is a Blog Good For? | Full Stop
A useful observation on what can sometimes happen around a niche blog was offered at a talk by Marcia Lynx Qualey in Cairo recently. This, too, happens at the literary mag blogs in this country.
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a pile of stuff #25
Something very silly - Dalek relaxation tapes, via James Bradley (@cityoftongues) on Twitter.
Why The Guardian rules the online space when it comes to books and community.
Let’s conveniently erase Tim Parks’ words on the fetishisation of the printed book and turn to the good folk at Melville House who blithely say, where’s the harm in a bit of book porn? From the Daily...
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PictureWire, an online gallery with room for... →
