Year: 2011

Section 1, “Life of Sade” — Roland Barthes’ Short Biography of The Marquis de Sade

Biblioklept1 Comment

From Roland Barthes’ “Life of Sade,” a short biography of The Marquis de Sade. Translated from the French by Richard Miller.  Read the entire essay at Supervert. (or here over the next few days, parceled out over 22 sections)—

1. Etymological chain: Sade, Sado, Sadone, Sazo, Sauza (village of Saze). Again, lost in this lineage, the evil letter. In attaining the accursed name, brilliantly formulated (it has engendered a common noun), the letter that, as we say in French, zebras, fustigates, the z, has given way to the softest of dentals.

 

Watch Happily Drowning, A Short Film by Sebastian Sommer Based on Two Tao Lin Stories

BibliokleptLeave a comment

Happily Drowning  a short film by Sebastian Sommer, based on the Tao Lin stories “Cancer” and “Robbers.” More on the film. Read the stories. I liked the short film more than the stories, but apples and oranges.

Motherhood — Raffaelle Monti

BibliokleptLeave a comment

Derrida Speaks of Love (Or Not)

BibliokleptLeave a comment

Book Acquired, 8.29.2011

Biblioklept2 Comments

20110829-021552.jpg

Got a finished copy of Chad Harbach’s (n+1) début novel The Art of Fielding today; the book comes out next week from Little, Brown & Company. Their description—

At Westish College, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for the big leagues until a routine throw goes disastrously off course. In the aftermath of his error, the fates of five people are upended. Henry’s life’s purpose is called into question. Guert Affenlight, the college’s president, has fallen helplessly, unexpectedly in love. Owen Glass, Henry’s gay roommate, becomes swept up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the team captain, realizes he guides Henry’s career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert’s daughter, returns to Westish to start a new life after an ill-fated marriage. As the season counts down to its climax, these five confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets, and help one another to find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence, and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment—to oneself and to others.

 

Read “Town of Cats,” a Story by Haruki Murakami

Biblioklept4 Comments

Today, The New Yorker shares “Town of Cats,” a short story by Haruki Murakami. First paragraph—

At Koenji Station, Tengo boarded the Chuo Line inbound rapid-service train. The car was empty. He had nothing planned that day. Wherever he went and whatever he did (or didn’t do) was entirely up to him. It was ten o’clock on a windless summer morning, and the sun was beating down. The train passed Shinjuku, Yotsuya, Ochanomizu, and arrived at Tokyo Central Station, the end of the line. Everyone got off, and Tengo followed suit. Then he sat on a bench and gave some thought to where he should go. “I can go anywhere I decide to,” he told himself. “It looks as if it’s going to be a hot day. I could go to the seashore.” He raised his head and studied the platform guide.

At that point, he realized what he had been doing all along.

Fun fact: I used to live in Shin-Koenji, right near Koenji, and I took the Chuou to work every day.

Hark, a Vagrant! Does the Romantics

Biblioklept1 Comment

Kate Beaton is the best. 

The Sleep of Sorrow and the Dream of Joy — Raffaelle Monti

BibliokleptLeave a comment

Books Acquired, 8.28.11

BibliokleptLeave a comment

20110828-082813.jpg

My mom brought over a bunch of stuff tonight including a collection of early ’70s Doonesbury strips in a four volume box set. I guess this was my dad’s? I’ve never understood a single Trudeau strip, ever, although I haven’t read one in years.

20110828-082821.jpg

Butch Cassidy’s Death Mask

Biblioklept3 Comments

RIP Stetson Kennedy, Florida Folklorist, Writer, and Human Rights Activist

Edwin Turner3 Comments

Stetson Kennedy died today at 94 in his native city, Jacksonville, FL.

Kennedy began his career collecting folklore throughout the South in 1937 after leaving the University of Florida. Kennedy worked for the Works Progress Administration’s Florida Writers’ Project, traveling with Zora Neale Hurston to collect oral histories and folk tales from both black and white Floridians alike. In the 1940s, Kennedy worked for the Atlanta office of the CIO. He also infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s and ’50s, exposing many of the racist organization’s secrets and alerting the world to the intrinsic injustice of the Jim Crow system in Southern states.

When Kennedy ran (quite unsuccessfully) for Governor of Florida in 1952, Woody Guthrie wrote the song “Stetson Kennedy” to support his good friend (Wilco and Billy Bragg put the lyrics to music decades later). Kennedy’s anti-Jim Crow, early Civil Rights platform didn’t win him much popularity throughout the state, and when his home in Fruit Cove was firebombed, he moved to France. It was there that the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre published Kennedy’s The Jim Crow Guide—but the book was too controversial for US publication, despite multiple translations across Europe. Even more incendiary was Kennedy’s expose The Klan Unmasked (1954), which helped to undermine the organization’s secret authority in the South.

Just as Kennedy’s contribution to the Civil Rights movement cannot be underestimated, neither can his work in collecting and preserving Florida folklore (as well as Southern folklore in general). Kennedy helped found the Florida Folklore Society and also served as president, and volumes like Palmetto County and Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West will remain staples of Florida folk culture. In 2009, Kennedy bequeathed his papers and personal library to the Civic Media Center in Gainesville, FL, a nonprofit info center and alternative library devoted to human rights, environmental protection, and other causes. Kennedy was closely involved with the CMC since its inception in 1993.

Kennedy was a vibrant fount of cultural and historical force, a man who worked his entire, long life not just to preserve folklore and its history, but also to show the radical place that folk culture occupies throughout time, linking core human values from generation to generation. Stetson Kennedy will live through his legacy.

Kennedy’s website sheds light on his final moments—

He was with his wife and stepdaughter, He was in no pain. And as recently as 4 days ago he was lucid and talking. The doctor, checking his mental faculties asked him questions “where are you from”, Kennedy replied, “The planet Earth”

Stetson’s wishes were for a party and not a funeral. A luncheon at Beluthahatchee will be held October 1st.

Kennedy on This American Life.

Read a 2011 interview with Kennedy in Vice Magazine.

See the Trailer for The Rum Diary — Johnny Depp Plays Hunter S. Thompson (or at Least His Alter Ego) Again

Biblioklept2 Comments

Read our review of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary.

Quentin Tarantino Talks About Being A Writer

Biblioklept1 Comment

Books Acquired, 8.26.11

Biblioklept2 Comments

20110826-045537.jpg

Double—or triple, really, Witold Gombrowicz grabs at the bookstore today. I love this cover for Ferdydurke (even the ink stain doesn’t really detract too much from its plain elegance). Intro is by Sontag! Should this be my next step after Trans-Atlantyk?

20110826-045545.jpg

Also picked up this Grove Press edition that collects both Cosmos and Pornografia. I’m not a fan of omnibus editions in general, but, hey, why pass up a chance to pick up a used copy of what is likely a not-so-easy-to-find book.

Hurricane Tips for Yankees

BibliokleptLeave a comment

You’ll need this—

A bunch of these—

Lots of these—

—and/or these—

Some of this—

And some of this—

Never hurts to have one of these around too—

It’s also a good idea to fill up the tub with water (Galifianakis and ducklings optional)—

In all seriousness though, good luck and stay safe.

“I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream”

BibliokleptLeave a comment

A favorite scene from a favorite film.

“The Monstropolous Beast Had Left His Bed” — Zora Neale Hurston’s Hurricane

Biblioklept1 Comment

In Chapter 18 of her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston imagines a hurricane descending on the Everglades as a cosmic monster. Her description comes in part from accounts of the 1928 Great Lake Okeechobee Hurricane—

Ten feet higher and far as they could see the muttering wall advanced before the braced-up waters like a road crusher on a cosmic scale. The monstropolous beast had left his bed. Two hundred miles an hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to- be conquerors, rolling the dikes, rolling the houses, rolling the people in the houses along with other timbers. The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel.