“The Royal Command” by Leonora Carrington I had received a royal command to visit the rulers of my country. The invitation, in gold letters in relief and adorned with roses and swallows, was bordered in lace. I went to look for my car, but the chauffeur, who lacks practical sense, had buried it. “It’s to… Continue reading “The Royal Command,” A Surreal Short Story by Leonora Carrington
“White Rabbits” by Leonora Carrington THE TIME has come that I must tell the events which began in 40 Pest St. The houses which were reddish-black looked as if they had survived mysteriously from the fire of London. The house in front of my window, covered with an occasional wisp of creeper, was as blank… Continue reading “White Rabbits” — Leonora Carrington
“The Debutante” by Leonora Carrington WHEN I was a debutante I often went to the zoological garden. I went so often that I was better acquainted with animals than with the young girls of my age. It was to escape from the world that I found myself each day at the zoo. The beast I… Continue reading “The Debutante,” A Short Story by Leonora Carrington
“The Beloved” by Leonora Carrington ONE LATE afternoon, passing through a narrow street, I stole a melon. The fruit man who was hidden behind his fruits seized me by the arm and said to me: “Señorita, I’ve been waiting for an occasion like this for forty years. I have spent forty years hidden behind this… Continue reading “The Beloved,” A Short Surrealist Tale by Leonora Carrington
A few years ago, spurred by a conversation with a colleague, I decided to blog about the best books from half a century ago. I enjoyed riffing on the possible “Best Books of 1972” so much that I did repeated the project last year with the possible “Best Books of 1973.” As in the previous… Continue reading Best Books of 1974?
Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed A frenetic, zany achronological satire of the American Civil War. I wrote about it here. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson Jackson gives us a quasi-idyllic-but-also-dystopian world delivered through narrator Merricat, an insane witch whom I adored. Merricat hates with beautiful intensity. The novel’s premise, prose, and… Continue reading Annotations on a list of books I read in full in 2020
Machines in the Head, new from NYRB, compiles twenty-three Anna Kavan stories that were originally published between 1940 and 1975, as well as one previously unpublished story. The stories here, culled from five previous collections, show not so much a stylistic evolution over three decades of Kavan’s writing as they do a writer pushing herself… Continue reading “Dreams like machines in the head” | A review of NYRB’s new Anna Kavan anthology
I’m really excited about this one. Anna Kavan’s novel Ice is one of the best books I read this year (I blogged about it here and here and here. T Machines in the Head: Selected Short Stories of Anna Kavan is out early next year from NYRB. Their blurb: Anna Kavan is one of the great originals of… Continue reading Machines in the Head: Selected Stories of Anna Kavan (Book acquired, 18 Nov. 2019)
My family and I spent a wonderful week in Oregon at the end of July. We visited friends who live in Portland, where we based our stay, and we drove to the coast, to Mount Hood, and to all kinds of beautiful places. It was really fucking lovely. Among all the gardens and forests and… Continue reading Blog about some books acquired
I haven’t done one of these roundups in a while (let alone updated Biblioklept’s main review page (argh!)) but here goes: I didn’t really write any reviews in April, it turns out. That was a pretty busy month for me, in retrospect, although I did read, and I did write about what I was reading,… Continue reading Reviews, riffs, anti-reviews, and interviews of April 2019-July 2019 (and an unrelated horned sheep)
As a huge fan of Remedios Varo’s art, I was thrilled last year when Wakefield Press published Margaret Carson’s Letters, Dreams and Other Writings. I reached out to Margaret, who was kind enough to talk to me about her translation in detail over a series of emails. In addition to Letters, Dreams and Other Writings Margaret Carson’s… Continue reading An interview with Margaret Carson about translating Remedios Varo’s Letters, Dreams & Other Writings
Here are some books I aim to read in 2019, sooner rather than later: Letters, Dreams & Other Writings by Remedios Varo (translated by Margaret Carson). I’m really digging this so far—I got it a week ago and have been skimming around in it. Varo is one of my favorite modern painters, and I love that… Continue reading Blog about some 2019 reading plans
Hi! Did anyone else experience 2017 as an overlong, poorly-conceived, cartoonishly bad, poorly-written dystopian novel? With that out of the way, a few notes on some of my favorite reading experiences this year—a year I abandoned more books than I stuck with, a year I wrote fewer reviews on this site than ever, a year that… Continue reading Some favorite books, 2017
I’m in the middle of Paul Bowles’s stories right now, and loving the weird sinister menace of it all. I’ll probably take a crack at some of his novels this year too (The Sheltering Sky next? I’ll need to pick them up). Senges’s The Major Refutation is also on deck. Not pictured, because it’s not out yet, is… Continue reading Some books I’ll try to read in 2017 (Presented by The Good Intentions Paving Company)
Vaclav Havel Christopher Hitchens Russell Hoban Ken Russell Joe Simon Stetson Kennedy Sidney Lumet George Whitman Lilian Jackson Braun Edwin Honig Michael S. Hart Gil Scott-Heron Bill Keane Jerry Leiber Diana Wynne Jones Bert Jansch Leonora Carrington Brian Jacques Barbara Grier Edouard Glissant Dwayne McDuffie Hisaye Yamamoto Phoebe Snow Anne McCaffrey Leonard B. Stern Vincent… Continue reading (An Incomplete) List of Writers Who Died in 2011
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