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Commonplace Book: Alexander Theroux on Boston
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. But it was not just one thing, it was everything about Boston from which at the time Eugene Eyestones wanted to get...
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Commonplace Book: Stefan Zeromski on Winter
View of Kościuszko Mound, 1904, by Stanisław Wyspiański “The cold that tore at his innards returned, and with it the pain that incessantly rent his head like an ax.” The Faithful River (1912) by Stefan...
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Commonplace Book: Ghostbusters on print media
In memory of Harold Ramis (1944 – 2014) Janine Melnitz: You’re very handy, I can tell. I bet you like to read a lot, too. Dr. Egon Spengler: Print is dead. Janine Melnitz: Oh, that’s very fascinating...
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Commonplace Book: Denise Levertov on Marriage
The Ache of Marriage The ache of marriage: thigh and tongue, beloved, are heavy with it, it throbs in the teeth We look for communion and are turned away, beloved, each and each It is leviathan and we...
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Commonplace Book: Karl Kraus and Charlie Hebdo
#JeSuisCharlie “Many people want to strike me dead. Others want to spend time chatting with me. The law protects me from the first group.” Dicta and Contradicta, by Karl Kraus, translated by Jonathan...
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Commonplace Book/Translation Tuesday: Paul Celan and Writing Beyond Humanity
Via Threadsuns above the grayblack wastes. A tree- high thought grasps the light-tone: there are still songs to sing beyond mankind. Fadensonnen über der grauschwartzen Ödnis. Ein baum- hoher Gedanke...
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Commonplace Book: Choice excerpts from “Satanskin,” by James Havoc
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. The butcher, a superstitious soul, often fancied he had seen faery lanterns dancing atop that hill. Loins piled...
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Commonplace Book: Priorities
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. Of old Lady Macleod I think I may say that she was a good woman; – that she was a good woman, though subject to two...
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Commonplace Book: From a slightly water-damaged collection of Sylvia Plath
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. “The Goring” [1956] Arena dust rusted by four bulls’ blood to a dull redness, The afternoon at a bad end under the...
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Short Takes I: Chinese Poetry
Fun-sized distillations of prose and poetry. Self-contained nuggets of literary craft. THE BAMBOO SHAPED POOL My lord contemplates a pool Where the branches droop over the water, And the jade green...
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Commonplace Book/Translation Tuesdays: Elias Canetti on minds and monsters
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. I admire those very broad people who through the decades become broader and broader yet do not give in. But the...
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Commonplace Book: An excerpt from “Tarantula,” Bob Dylan’s only novel
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. Via Unresponsible Black Nite Crash the united states is Not soundproof – you might think that nothing can reach...
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Commonplace Book: Captain Malcolm Reynolds on Short-fingered Racist Vulgarians
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. Via Well, my days of not takin’ ya seriously are certainly comin’ to a middle. – Firefly, “Our Mrs. Reynolds”...
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Commonplace Book: Jack Burton on Paying Your Dues
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. Via When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the...
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Commonplace Book: Inauguration Celebration Spectacular
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. Via 26. THE GRANDIOSE OR IMPERTURBABLE CUCKOLD THE GRANDIOSE OR IMPERTURBABLE CUCKOLD is a man who is not affected...
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Commonplace Book: Tom Wolfe on Impeachment and Continuity
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. Via THE FALL OF NIXON The chief lesson of Watergate: the stability of the American political system is profound. It...
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Commonplace Book: T.E. Lawrence on Arab zeal
Via Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with another...
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Commonplace Book: Roy Cohn on traitors
Via Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. ROY: You ever hear of Ethel Rosenberg? Huh, Joe, huh? JOE: Well, yeah, I guess I. … Yes. ROY: Yes. Yes. You...
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Commonplace Book: Anthony Burgess on book reviewers
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. Via “… reviewers do not read books with much care … their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and...
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Commonplace Book: Literary Wives and Mistresses
Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany. “As Shakespeare says in his 144th sonnet, and as Josephine Baker reaffirms in her well-known song, each of us has...
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