- Amerika
- Billy Budd, Sailor
- The Castle
- Confessions of Felix Krull
- The Decembrists
- The First Man
- Fragment of a Novel
- The Garden of Eden
- The Last Tycoon
- The Mysterious Stranger
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood
- The Original of Laura
- The Pale King
- The Pink and the Green
- Stephen Hero
- The Trial
- Under the Hill
Author: Biblioklept
A Nightpiece — Aubrey Beardsley
Penelope Unraveling Her Web — Joseph Wright of Derby
Prairie Chicken (Self-Portrait) — Margot Peet
Seven Self-Portraits — Armand Henrion
Harry Crews’s A Childhood (Book acquired, 9.20.2016)
A couple of weeks back, I was looking for John Berryman’s biographical study of Stephen Crane. I did not find it, but I did find a signed hardback edition (not sure if it’s a first or second printing) of Harry Crews’s amazing memoir A Childhood.
Here’s the opening paragraph:
I already have the book (it’s included in Classic Crews—the best starting place for Crews (you should start)), but I couldn’t pass up a signed copy. (It was like 8 bucks I think, and I have store credit out the wazoo).
Still looking for that Crane biography though.
Samson Blinded — Lovis Corinth
Metamorphoses II — Graca Morais
Portrait of Zora Neale Hurston — Carl Van Vechten
Robot Like You and Me — Hans Georg Rauch
Persefone Meta-statica — Agostino Arrivabene
Isabella and the Pot of Basil — William Holman Hunt
And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten’d it with tears unto the core.
–John Keats, Isabella, or The Pot of Basil
The most effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume that it is a complete fiction (J.G. Ballard)
In the past we have always assumed that the external world around us has represented reality, however confusing or uncertain, and that the inner world of our minds, its dreams, hopes, ambitions, represented the realm of fantasy and the imagination. These roles, it seems to me, have been reversed. The most prudent and effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume that it is a complete fiction – conversely, the one small node of reality left to us is inside our own heads. Freud’s classic distinction between the latent and manifest content of the dream, between the apparent and the real, now needs to be applied to the external world of so-called reality.
From J.G. Ballard’s 1995 introduction to the Vintage reprint of his 1973 novel Crash.
The Loyal Retainers (detail) — Mu Pan
Head of a Dog — Edvard Munch
Woman with a Cat — Fernand Léger
Figure with Shirt — Neil Welliver
Biblioklept 