The Art of Memoir (1)
How often I feel, as if hearing a voice behind intermittent sounds, that I myself am the underlying bitterness of this life so alien to human life— a life in which nothing happens except in its self-awareness!
The Art of the Interview (5): I Met the Walrus
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an…
The History of Dialogue (2): Joyce & Proust
Several Accounts of the Meeting Between James Joyce and Marcel Proust. From Proust at the Majestic by Richard Davenport-Hines: May 18, 1922. The Majestic, a…
Arguing the Web (2): Correspondence
“Better save my letters,” Burroughs instructed Allen Ginsberg, “maybe we can get out a book of them later on when I have a rep.” This…
The History of Dialogue (1): Marx & Lincoln
Karl Marx writes to Abraham Lincoln on November 22, 1864 Sir: We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance…
Arguing the Web (1): Mash-Up A/V
Internet meme circa 2008: Bob Fosse choreography set to Unk’s “Walk it Out.” (above) Nick Sylvester on Girl Talk for Riff Market: If Girl Talk has done…
Lost & Found (4)
Dispatches from the Reanimation Library: "Hypnography: A Study in the Therapeutic Use of Hypnotic Painting." Mears, Ainslie. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1957.
The Art of the Blurb (4)
W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) introduces "Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall" by Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682).
The Art of the Obituary (8): Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist, (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) He did not give “a flying fuck” what he smoked, or ingested, or…
I am a Kettle
From Newsweek: A one-page school writing assignment, written when David Foster Wallace was 9 years old
Variations on a Theme: Poor Loonies
(via) My vocation [as a writer] changed everything: the sword-strokes fly off, the writing remains; I discovered in belles-lettres that the Giver can be…
The Art of Cuisine (2): Samuel Johnson
Dinner on a Man-of-War, Anonymous, ca. 1893 Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay’s sharp, scintillating 1856 biography of British author Samuel Johnson turned out to be quite…
Lost & Found (2)
Dispatches from the Reanimation Library Danger! Icebergs Ahead! Poole, Lynn and Gray Johnson Poole. New York: Random House, 1961. The Reanimation Library is a…
Urban Planning
Monologue from The Cruise (1998) The image makes me think of this conversation with this woman the other day. She was this fastidious Judaic type woman…
The Art of the Obituary (7): Momofuku Ando
(via) Momofuku Ando, inventor of instant noodles (March 5, 1910 – January 5, 2007) He ate Chikin Ramen, his original flavour of noodles, almost every…
The Art of Cuisine (1): Mămăligă
H. Ellen Browning, distant relative of English poet Robert Browning, chronicles her adventures in Eastern Europe in her travel memoir A Girl’s Wanderings in Hungary…