Puddinhead

Puddinhead Wilson has long been one of my favorite books.  I came across this poster for an 1895 dramatization of the book in the Library of Congress' performing arts poster collection.

Diving into the wreck

I first read this in, what, 1976 or so?

I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold. ...
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to the scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Rest in peace, Adrienne Rich.

When I was poet laureate of the United States...

The Lost Memory of Skin

I've just read Russell Banks' book...

Except Obama, except Obama, help us Jesus!

Her name, I believe, was Sally Ann James, and as Representative Pallone read “no person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,” Ms. James stood and shouted, “Except Obama, except Obama, help us Jesus!” Then the Speaker directed the Sargent to remove her from the chamber. Rodriguez and I each took one of her elbows and led her away.

Some news reports said she had a placard, but I did not see that. “Help us Jesus,” however, I heard her say that in the Chambers, and she said it quite a few more times as we led her away and through the tunnel that connects the Chambers to The Pen, and then over and over as we turned from the tunnel and passed through the gray metal door that leads to the Room, “Help us Jesus!”.

In the Room we beat her, not too much, but about the face because most people find that very upsetting, and then generally. We broke a few bones but did not do anything crazy. We did not sexually abuse her, and we have not sexually abused any female hecklers since early in the Pelosi tenure. Every speaker imposes his or her own limitations or additions on the actions of the Sargent’s arms, and that was Pelosi’s. This far and no further. This far the Lord has helped us. What will Weeper Boehner want? Nothing kinky, I hope.

Then I broke her neck, Ms. James. Rodriguez laid her body down and in a single stroke severed her head with the large, heavy blade we keep in the Room just for that purpose. We put the head in a plastic carrying case, like an old style gym bag, really, and I walked with it out to the garage, where I got into one of the idling Federal cruisers.

We drove to the White House. Someone had already fetched a stepstool and put it along the fence on the Pennsylvania Avenue side. I climbed up, opened the bag - I hate this part because my balance isn’t great and I can’t hold on to the fence to steady myself - grabbed Ms. James’ head by the hair and ears with both my hands, let the bag drop, raised her head up above my own and brought it down hard so one of the spikes of the fence jammed up her neck and into her the skull. Properly impaled, right there next to the others, some of which were in very poor shape, while the crows flapped up and waited.   If she had had a placard, I would have hung it below her.

The Names

Back in the last week of March I grabbed an old paperback copy of DeLillo's The Names from a shelf in our living room.  It was printed in '83, and we figure we read it in 85.  It's a touchstone book for us, it was very wound up in ideas we were thinking and projects we were planning.  This copy was yellow and brittle, the covers falling off.  I taped it as best I could and put a paper cover over it, but it was still in such poor shape that if I tried to hold it with one hand on the subway, with my thumb jammed into the binding to keep it open enough to read, it cracked.  I told Lori about what bad shape the book is in, and she remembered that we bought a hardcopy some time later.  We looked for it, voila, and that's the copy I finished.

About that hardcopy: it's a first edition (1982).  And, judging from the mark on the bottom of the pages, it had been remaindered.  A first edition of our favorite book by one of our country's great living writers, about themes that completely dominate our times (oilwarterrorismcomplicity anybody?) remaindered.  Not available, by the by, as an ebook.

See you at St. Marks?

And a happy New Year!  And there's poesy in the air!  Nu?

Hauling my reading from the heap

My reading's been all the heck over the place - marooned in the middle of four books at the same time now, and I needed something small and sharp to prod me out of it all.  Seems like Paul Auster's Sunset Park is just the thing.  Your mileage may vary.

Gone to the country

We had a great time getting to hear Ray Allen talk about his book, then seeing & listening to John Cohen play with the Dustbusters, and then seeing Pete Stampfel's Ether Frolic mash up with the Dustbusters for the rest of the evening.  Thank you, Jalopy.

Hey, you say, Why don't you ever mention other folks in the Ether Frolic?  Hey, right, OK.  Jane Gilday.

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books

I've been reading Fernando Báez's  A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq.  I'd picked it up some time last year, set it aside, then picked it up again in the aftermath of 9/11 book burning.  What an insane and consistent (persistent) story.  

Oh, yeah, you might have missed the American book tour.

Fictive whiff of fresh air. And grapes.

Somehow, even though it deals with many of the same issues, reading Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year seems like a whiff of fresh air after reading the very well written The Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel, and A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, by Amitava Kumar.  At heart, I'm still just a fiction boy after all these years.  (Also read the two non-fiction books on various e-readers, and am reading the Coetzee in glorious paper.  See the McSweeney's article Juju pointed us to yesterday: After a Thorough Battery of Tests We Can Now Recommend "The Newspaper" As the Best e-Reader On the Market.)  And, yes, I put Diary in the same red paper cover I had used for Island at The Center of the World.  Thanks for asking.

About the grapes: yesterday morning at 5 AM I was out back and smooshed some while I was walking around and realized that I was surrounded with the smell of ripe grapes.  Woof.

The Captain: Isabel and tales of passion

Our friend, The Captain, wants you to watch Isabel Allende telling tales of passion.

Normal

Am reading Don DeLillo's Point Omega, sitting in a car in the visitor's parking lot at the Maine State Prison (long story, short version) and I read:
"They were as normal as people could be and still be normal, she said. A little more normal, they might be dangerous."
Roger, that.
Sent via thingy

Bittman => Thorne => Spoerri...

Bittman took me back to Thorne, and Thorne has taken me to Spoerri (the reprint of 2/3 of The Mythological Travels of a Modern Sir. John Mandeville, which is Mythological Meatballs).

Every boro oughta have one (poet laureate, nu?)

Tina Chang.  NYT article.

(I have no tag for poesy!  I'm a little shocked.)

Hold for Lewis

When I was reading Ruhlman and he kept referring to McGee, I thought, Oh, yeah, I've seen that book...  And when I was rummaging around yesterday for the big Beard (guidance needed re sourdough), Oh, yeah, look, there's the McGee, right next to the Beard.  And when I took it off the shelf and opened it, there was this bookmark in it from Book Court, and on the back of the bookmark was Hold for Lewis 1/6/05.
So, once upon a time, exactly 5 years and one month before pulling it off my shelf yesterday, Lota or I wanted the McGee badly enough to special order it.  Maybe I even started reading it before.  The bookmark was inserted in the section on milk chemistry.  (I sat down with the book and started reading it from the beginning, got weirdly to just about exactly the point where I'd found the bookmark, stuck the bookmark back in, and wandered off muttering about hairy milk proteins having their negatively charged tips sheared of to get all curdlike.) I'm gonna look on that shelf again today to see what else it remembers for me. 

The 25th anniversary edition of Little Big, by John Crowley

Ron Drummand and (as) Incunabula has put together a web site (interviews, essays) celebrating the 25th anniversary of John Crowley's Little Big.

Dan Levy, who I haven't seen more than once or twice in a long time, is the person who recommended Little Big to me.   (He recommended I read Ægypt first, but I didn't. Faraway Hills is in Ægypt, and farawayhills is, sort of, where I live.  Now I'm really digressing, but there's a spur of land in the Hudson just north of Cold Spring on the east bank of the river, 41.425841,-73.969586, which I always make believe is the site of some of the parties in Ægypt.  I don't typically mention this to anyone, because, aside from Dan, I don't know anyone else who's read Ægypt: maybe I just need to ask more people if they have.)  Dan's been many web people, pretty fancy, but at the time we're talking he was Levity.) My jaw stayed dropped the entire time I read Little Big. I laughed, I cried. I mean I really wept at one point when I realized how much I identified with one of the characters and that character was now, no kidding, just dead.

You know, when I finish reading what I'm reading now, I'm going to go back and reread Little Big. Or maybe wait for the 25th anniversary printing in April.  Thank you, Incunabula.

[Well, I'm in a groove.  Let me say a little more.  David Kassel introduced me to Dan Levy, lo those many years ago, and David is the other half of a few of web projects I posted about earlier this week.  We saw D last week for the first time in a long time, and I told him then that I had a dream - a pretty horrific dream about Dan L.  OK: here's how old friends differ.  DK immediately launched the question What does that mean about you (me, Stumpy)?, whereas I was telling DK because my next question was Is everything OK with DL?

I think I'm done now.]

Seymour Topping

Yeah, well, right, you probably don't have an hour to watch this.  But dip in and out.  Seymour Topping was at amazing places at amazing times.  (And he's our friend's dad!) This is a 2005 interview, shortly after the publication of his book, Fatal Crossroads, A Novel of Vietnam 1945.

Topping articles at the NYTimes.

Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz

Yesterday at Unnameable I picked up a copy of the poems of Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz in a a translation by Margaret Sayers Peden.  Knowing nothing about older Mexican or New Spain lit, when I read Bolaño I couldn't quite tell if the Sister was a character of Bolaño's or real.  Now I know - Bolaño is a character of the Sister's.

The letters

Yes, I spent a week in Amsterdam last month, with not a single responsibility, and never made it to the Van Gogh museum (or any other museum, for that matter, except FOAM).  But now I'm browsing the Van Gogh letters, annotated, searchable, and all that.  At the Van Gogh Museum, where I probably could have seen the darned things in the papery flesh.  Via the WSJ via Arts & Letters Daily.