After her bus accident, Kahlo was in a full body cast for three months, and she remained in pain for the rest of her life. She painted her casts and corsets, turning them from medical equipment into artworks
Charles Burns’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival Poster
Orson Welles on making fun of Ernest Hemingway
“The Hunter Gracchus,” a short tale by Franz Kafka
“The Hunter Gracchus”
by
Franz Kafka
Two boys were sitting on the wall by the jetty playing dice. A man was reading a newspaper on the steps of a monument in the shadow of a hero wielding a sabre. A young girl was filling her tub with water at a fountain. A fruit seller was lying close to his produce and looking out to sea. Through the empty openings of the door and window of a bar two men could be seen drinking wine in the back. The landlord was sitting at a table in the front dozing. A small boat glided lightly into the small harbour, as if it were being carried over the water. A man in a blue jacket climbed out onto land and pulled the ropes through the rings. Behind the man from the boat, two other men in dark coats with silver buttons carried a bier, on which, under a large silk scarf with a floral pattern and fringe, a man was obviously lying.
No one bothered with the newcomers on the jetty, even when they set the bier down to wait for their helmsman, who was still working with the ropes. No one came up to them, no one asked them any questions, no one took a closer look at them.
The helmsman was further held up a little by a woman with disheveled hair, who now appeared on deck with a child at her breast. Then he came on, pointing to a yellowish two-story house which rose close by, directly on the left near the water. The bearers took up their load and carried it through the low door furnished with slender columns. A small boy opened a window, noticed immediately how the group was disappearing into the house, and quickly shut the window again. The door closed. It had been fashioned with care out of black oak wood. A flock of doves, which up to this point had been flying around the bell tower, came down in front of the house. The doves gathered before the door, as if their food was stored inside the house. One flew right up to the first floor and pecked at the window pane. They were brightly coloured, well cared for, lively animals. With a large sweep of her hand the woman on the boat threw some seeds towards them. They ate them up and then flew over to the woman. Continue reading ““The Hunter Gracchus,” a short tale by Franz Kafka”
Don’t Try This at Home (Book acquired, 4.30.2015)
Angela Readman’s short story collection Don’t Try This at Home is new from And Other Stories. Their blurb:
A girl repeatedly chops her boyfriend in half but, while her ‘other half’ multiplies, she is still not satisfied. Love transforms a mother working down the chippie – into Elvis! An old witch takes in a young one and, despite her best, magical powers, can’t help revealing something of the real world to her apprentice. Beautiful, sharp and fearless, these stories breathe. Do Try This at Home.
In Angela Readman’s debut collection, each story packs its share of explosive material. In every one, quirky new strategies for surviving troubled lives are revealed, often through a transformative touch of contemporary magic.
If Angela Carter were Readman’s fairy godmother, would that make David Lynch her wicked stepbrother? Don’t say you weren’t warned!
Moby Dick — Hieronimus Fromm
The Penitent Magdalen in a Landscape (Detail) — Annibale Carracci
Orson Welles’ Sketch Book
Raconteur Orson Welles riffs on a number of subjects in these short commentaries, which originally aired on the BBC in 1955. Topics include earthquakes, curses, police work, negative reviews, Martians, magic, etc.
Tunnel — Winsor McCay
Umbra — Dino Valls
“I think I could turn and live with animals” — Walt Whitman
Section 32 of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”
***
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me, and I accept them;
They bring me tokens of myself—they evince them plainly in their possession.
I wonder where they get those tokens:
Did I pass that way huge times ago, and negligently drop them?
Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them;
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers;
Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.
A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes full of sparkling wickedness—ears finely cut, flexibly moving.
His nostrils dilate, as my heels embrace him;
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure, as we race around and return.
I but use you a moment, then I resign you, stallion;
Why do I need your paces, when I myself out-gallop them?
Even, as I stand or sit, passing faster than you.
Joseph Cornell — Duane Michals
Check out Waywords and Meansigns, a musical adaptation of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
Biblioklept: What is Waywords and Meansigns?
Derek Pyle: Waywords and Meansigns is a collaborative music project recreating James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Seventeen different musicians from all around world have each taken a chapter of Finnegans Wake and set it to music, thereby creating an unabridged audio version of Finnegans Wake.
Finnegans Wake is an incredible book, but it’s notoriously difficult to read. One hope of the project is to create a version of the Wake that is accessible to newcomers — people can just listen to and enjoy the music. To maximize accessibility, we are distributing all the audio freely via our website. But the project does not only appeal to Wake newcomers — as we’ve seen so far, a lot of scholars and devoted readers are also finding Waywords and Meansigns an exciting way of interpreting and engaging with Joyce’s text.
Windsor, May 1829 — Walton Ford
Grass Labyrinth, a short film by Shuji Terayama
“If I should learn, in some quite casual way” — Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship During the Battle of Gibraltar — Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen
Biblioklept 