I’m finishing up Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and I came to this shocking, weird, gross, Christmasy reference near the end of the book. The context is that, in 1950s America, Sibyl, a white woman, wants the narrator, a black man, to fulfill her rape fantasy. Page 522 of my edition–
J. D. Salinger, 91, American author
Howard Zinn, 87, American historian
Barry Hannah, 67, American novelist and short story writer
David Markson, 82, American writer
Harvey Pekar, 70, American comic book writer (American Splendor)
Tuli Kupferberg, 86, American poet, cartoonist and musician (The Fugs)
David Mills, 48, American author, journalist and television writer (NYPD Blue, The Corner, Kingpin)
Dick Giordano, 77, American comic book artist and editor (Batman, Green Lantern)
José Saramago, 87, Portuguese novelist, playwright and journalist, Nobel Prize winner for literature
Lucille Clifton, 73, American poet (Blessing the Boats), Poet Laureate of Maryland
Robert Dana, 80, American poet, Iowa poet laureate
Rajendra Keshavlal Shah, 96, Indian poet
Tibet, 78, French comics artist
Mary Daly, 81, American radical feminist philosopher
Knox Burger, 87, American editor, writer, and literary agent
George Leonard, 86, American writer, editor and educator, pioneer of the Human Potential Movement
Robert B. Parker, 77, American detective writer
Laura Chapman Hruska, 74, American writer, co-founder and editor in chief of Soho Press
Stephen Morse, 65, American poet
P. K. Page, 93, Canadian poet
Bingo Gazingo, 85, American performance poet
Kage Baker, 57, American science fiction and fantasy author
Ralph McInerny, 80, American philosopher (University of Notre Dame) and mystery author
Erich Segal, 72, American professor, author (Love Story), and screenwriter (Yellow Submarine)
Carlos Montemayor, 62, Mexican writer
Violet Barclay, 87, American comic book artist
David Severn, 91, British author
Colin Ward, 85, British anarchist writer
William Tenn, 89, American science fiction writer
Liz Carpenter, 89, American feminist author, press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson (1963–1969)
John Eric Holmes, 80, American science fiction and fantasy author
Ai Ogawa, 62, American poet, breast cancer
Patricia Wrightson, 88, Australian children’s writer
Matilde Elena López, 91, Salvadoran poet, essayist and playwright
Elena Schwarz, 61, Russian poet
Ella Mae Johnson, 106, American social worker and author
Miguel Delibes, 89, Spanish author, journalist and scholar
Sid Fleischman, 90, American children’s writer
Bill DuBay, 62, American comic book editor, writer, and artist
Henry Scarpelli, 79, American comic book artist (Archie)
Alan Sillitoe, 82, British writer (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning)
Jan Balabán, 49, Czech writer, recipient of the Magnesia Litera award
William Neill, 88, British poet
Carolyn Rodgers, 69, American poet
Peter Orlovsky, 76, American poet
Leslie Scalapino, 65, American poet, publisher and playwright
Peter Seaton, 67, American poet
Judson Crews, 92, American poet
Hoàng Cầm, 88, Vietnamese poet and playwright
Donald Windham, 89, American novelist
Bree O’Mara, 42, South African novelist
Robert Tralins, 84, American author
Ruth Chew, 90, American children’s author
Randolph Stow, 74, Australian writer
Arthur Herzog, 83, American writer
Peter O’Donnell, 90, British writer
T. M. Aluko, 91, Nigerian writer
Kovilan, 86, Indian novelist
F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, 62, Welsh science fiction author
Allen Hoey, 57, American poet
José Albi, 88, Spanish poet
Andrei Voznesensky, 77, Russian poet and writer
Vladimír Bystrov, 74, Czech writer and translator
Suso Cecchi d’Amico, 96, Italian screenwriter (Bicycle Thieves)
Tom Mankiewicz, 68, American screenwriter (James Bond, Superman)
Iris Gower, 75, Welsh novelist
Jon Cleary, 92, Australian novelist (The Sundowners, High Road to China)
James P. Hogan, 69, British science fiction author
Michèle Causse, 74, French lesbian theorist, author and translator
Vance Bourjaily, 87, American novelist
Patrick Cauvin, 77, French novelist
Sir Frank Kermode, 90, British literary critic and writer
Ludvík Kundera, 90, Czech writer and translator
George Hitchcock, 96, American poet and publisher
Jennifer Rardin, 45, American author
Edwin Charles Tubb, 90, British science fiction author
Micky Burn, 97, British writer and poet
Belva Plain, 95, American novelist (Evergreen)
Bärbel Mohr, 46, German author
George Cain, 66, American author
Claire Rayner, 79, British author
Alí Chumacero, 92, Mexican writer and poet
Monica Johnson, 54, American novelist and screenwriter (Lost in America, Modern Romance)
Philip Carlo, 61, American crime author
Adrian Păunescu, 67, Romanian author, poet and politician
Dmitry Gorchev, 47, Russian writer
Richard Stanley “Dick” Francis, 79, a British jockey who later wrote crime novels about horse racing
Stuart McMillen’s webcomic does a marvelous job of adapting (and updating!) Neil Postman’s famous book-length essay, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which argues that Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future in Brave New World was ultimately more accurate than the one proposed by George Orwell in 1984. (Via).
“Idea for a Short Documentary Film,” a very short story by Lydia Davis, from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis –
Representatives of different food products manufacturers try to open their own packaging.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
The New Yorker has published a new George Saunders short story,“Escape from Spiderhead.” Read it here. A sample–
“Drip on?” Abnesti said over the P.A.
“What’s in it?” I said.
“Hilarious,” he said.
“Acknowledge,” I said.
Abnesti used his remote. My MobiPak™ whirred. Soon the Interior Garden looked really nice. Everything seemed super-clear.
I said out loud, as I was supposed to, what I was feeling.
“Garden looks nice,” I said. “Super-clear.”
Abnesti said, “Jeff, how about we pep up those language centers?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Drip on?” he said.
“Acknowledge,” I said.
He added some Verbaluce™ to the drip, and soon I was feeling the same things but saying them better. The garden still looked nice. It was like the bushes were so tight-seeming and the sun made everything stand out? It was like any moment you expected some Victorians to wander in with their cups of tea. It was as if the garden had become a sort of embodiment of the domestic dreams forever intrinsic to human consciousness. It was as if I could suddenly discern, in this contemporary vignette, the ancient corollary through which Plato and some of his contemporaries might have strolled; to wit, I was sensing the eternal in the ephemeral.
I sat, pleasantly engaged in these thoughts, until the Verbaluce™ began to wane. At which point the garden just looked nice again. It was something about the bushes and whatnot? It made you just want to lay out there and catch rays and think your happy thoughts. If you get what I mean.
Then whatever else was in the drip wore off, and I didn’t feel much about the garden one way or the other. My mouth was dry, though, and my gut had that post-Verbaluce™ feel to it.
“What’s going to be cool about that one?” Abnesti said. “Is, say a guy has to stay up late guarding a perimeter. Or is at school waiting for his kid and gets bored. But there’s some nature nearby? Or say a park ranger has to work a double shift?”
“That will be cool,” I said.
“That’s ED763,” he said. “We’re thinking of calling it NatuGlide. Or maybe ErthAdmire.”
“Those are both good,” I said.
“Thanks for your help, Jeff,” he said.
Which was what he always said.
“Only a million years to go,” I said.
Which was what I always said.
Then he said, “Exit the Interior Garden now, Jeff, head over to Small Workroom 2.”
From Roberto Bolaño’s July, 2003 interview with Mexican Playboy, collected in The Last Interview and Other Conversations—
Every time I read that someone has spoken badly of me I begin to cry, I drag myself across the floor, I scratch myself, I stop writing indefinitely, I lose my appetite, I smoke less, I engage in sport, I go for walks on the edge of the sea, which by the way is less than 30 meters from my house, and I ask the seagulls, whose ancestors ate the fish who ate Ulysses: Why me? Why? I’ve done you no harm.
From Roberto Bolaño’s July, 2003 interview with Mexican Playboy, collected in The Last Interview and Other Conversations—
The good thing about stealing books–unlike safes–is that one can carefully examine their contents before perpetrating the crime.
Biblioklept 