Category: lit

• Research / East Baltimore police narratives in ixd, lit, reviews, urban · May 4, 17:53

  Last week I picked up a book called

• Andrei Tarkovsky’s family polaroids in cinema, lit, visual · May 4, 17:05

  Back when the Berkeley Public Library was the hub of my social universe, I spent a lot of time in its video room — in the mid-90’s, it occupied a little corner of the basement — working my way through its extensive collection of foreign VHS movies. I had plenty of time on my hands, [...]

• Books / Pelican covers in inside art, lit, visual, web · Apr 16, 02:03

  things magazine has amassed an incredible index of Pelican book covers from the 1930s through the 80s. The one above is from 1968. Check it.

• William F. Buckley was the Wizard of Oz in lit · Mar 15, 19:28

  Dick Cavett has a blog called Talk Show at the New York Times, and he has recently written two [1, 2] hilarious entries about his friendship with William F. Buckley. The most recent includes an excellent story about Buckley’s love of practical jokes, one of which I’ll paste in its entirety right here:
  Dick Clurman of [...]

• Impactful in lit, tip · Jan 19, 18:05

  It’s not a word, but lots of people like to use it as if it were. Over the past few years, I’ve heard it more and more often, but today was the first day I’ve ever seen it in the mainstream media. Hmmm.
  Is there something deficient about “influential” or “resonant?” What about affecting, authoritative, controlling, [...]

• Readings / Design, westerns, obsolete vernaculars in architecture, ideas, lit · Oct 17, 01:54

  This is a photo by Thomas Allen. I first noticed his stuff when I saw the covers of Vintage reissues of James Ellroy’s novels (like this one for Suicide Hill). The photo above is from a series of dioramas that Allen created from cut-outs of 50’s pulp novels. I love the use of the book-ends [...]

• Lit / No room for anything but the old verities in lit, visual · Sep 26, 20:53

  The NYT book blog Paper Cuts recently published a nice entry about William Faulkner’s late-in-life visit to West Point. It reminded me of one of my favorite moments from the (apparently out-of-print) Faulkner Reader: his acceptance speech for the 1949 Nobel Prize.
  Reading it again this afternoon, this portion of his speech seems especially timely and [...]

• 100 Northern California Hiking Trails in lit, outdoors, the ancient past, visual · Sep 18, 22:09

  I stumbled upon a treasure trove of old outdoors books at Iconoclast Books in Ketchum, Idaho this weekend; this one’s from 1970.

  The cover ultimately doesn’t make much difference, but I like this one.

  If only hiking through sun cups like these was as serene and lovely as the photo implies. Also, the introductory text instructs [...]

• Literary blogs / Paper Cuts in lit, tip · Sep 6, 04:00

  I’ve spent a lot time combing through the archives of Paper Cuts, the blog of the New York Times Book Review editor Dwight Garner. It steers clear of smartypantsness, focusing on what one might call the lighter side of serious literature. In fact, most of the content is on the periphery of the strictly literary [...]

• Weekend reading / Nuclear war, office drama in lit · May 23, 18:07

  William Langewiesche, The Atomic Bazaar
  I came upon the work of journalist William Langweische in pre-Internet times, reading a faded and dog-eared photocopy of “The World In Its Extreme,” a series of Atlantic Monthly articles that trace his travels across the Sahara desert. A vivid scene leaps to my whenever I’m in an airplane: He is [...]

• National nightmares / Restoring a modicum of utility to the Complete New Yorker in ixd, lit · Feb 1, 22:10

  I was one of the suckers who pre-ordered The Complete New Yorker magazine. I am a long-long-time New Yorker reader, and the enticement was just too powerful — 8 DVDs filled with 60+ years of cultural commentary, quirky cartoons and cool cover art, all in a distinct highbrow-yet-practical-minded voice and scanned in at super-high-res? For [...]

• Lit / Quang Phúc Ðông & pornolinguistics in lit · Jan 18, 17:03

  As I poked around new-ish social networking sites targeted at wordy people (Library Thing — connecting through lists of books) and (Wordie — lists of words), I came across a reference to a satirical paper entitled English Sentences Without Overt Grammatical Subjects.1
  The paper’s author is listed as Quang Phúc Ðông of the South Hanoi [...]

• Lit / Simpler, more anarchic times in lit, the ancient past · Jan 12, 18:17

  Let’s just say that I’ve crossed paths with the Anarchist Cookbook [Wikipedia] [Amazon] a couple of times in my life. In my youth, making a film canister bomb was a popular diversion, and the cookbook teaches you how to make it with stuff you can buy at a scientific material supply store. The first step [...]

• Lit / Fall reading list in lit · Oct 24, 11:09

  Somehow a recent NYT Book Review convinced me that I needed to read this season’s hott new thing, Special Topics in Calamity Physics by a much-blogged-about literary debutante, Marisha Pessl. It’s no Secret History, if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s not bad, but on the other hand it’s not especially delicious, nor [...]

• Lit / Philip K Dick on building universes in lit, tip · Sep 13, 21:24

  In 1978, Philip K Dick published an essay called “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later.” The title sort of says it all; it’s about how to envision the world of a story in a way that lasts. He cuts right to chase, too, confronting the hard question that most [...]

• Books / Game of Shadows in baseball, lit, reviews · Apr 3, 19:40

  I was just watching ESPN’s Opening Day coverage of the Braves-Dodgers game, and the conversation between commentator Erik Karros (wasn’t he Rookie of the Year like 5 years ago?) and Rick Sutcliffe turned to steroids. Karros couldn’t contain himself. He blustered and rambled for a while, criticizing those who demanded an investigation, and basically rehashed [...]

• Truth, fiction, the Village Voice, Sylvestergate in lit · Mar 6, 23:58

  Village Voice writer Nick Sylvester joins the ranks of defamed young journalists with his recent foray into research fabrication — i.e., he basically invented a (mostly unremarkable) scene that neatly summed up his thoughts in an article on Neil Strauss’s The Game and its effect on NYC dating culture. The obviously weird thing is that [...]

• New Yorker cartoon formula exposed! in lit, tip · Sep 29, 15:36

  Take one character each from column A and column B, place them in one of column C’s settings, and voila! You have the makings of a New Yorker cartoon. Supposedly, this was the doing of a group of NYer cartoonists at a recent festival.

• Termites eat New Orleans in lit, reviews · Sep 1, 15:16

  After Hurricane Katrina, the recent Harper’s magazine feature about the uncontrollable, unfathomed termite infestation of the French Quarter seems downright eerie. Equal parts information and meditation, Duncan Murrell’s “The Swarm” is an effective, moving blend of first-hand reporting on blizzard-like termite swarms, spooky interviews with insect experts, and genuine Southern gothic moments:
  Where the Formosans [...]

• Nurse! Get me Rolling Stone on the phone! in lit, reviews, tip · Jun 21, 12:17

  Has there been a more thankless task in modern literary history than editing Hunter S. Thompson? According to former Rolling Stone editor Robert Love, the magazine actually assigned junior editors the task of babysitting Thompson as he approached his deadline. (Okay, there are worse junior editing tasks than that; I’ve done them). In a recent [...]

• Reflections on my Pynchon obsession in lit, reviews, the ancient past · Jun 2, 17:18

  Bookforum recently published a tribute to Thomas Pynchon called “Pynchon from A to V,” written by critic and Pynchon maniac Gerald Howard. Most Pynchon fans discover that their love dare not speak its name because when it does, it instantly labels one as a literary snob and smartypants. Like experience in armed combat, love of [...]