May 31, ’82.—”From to-day I enter upon my 64th year. The paralysis that first affected me nearly ten years ago, has since remain’d, with varying course—seems to have settled quietly down, and will probably continue. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk far; but my spirits are first-rate. I go around in public almost every day—now and then take long trips, by railroad or boat, hundreds of miles—live largely in the open air—am sunburnt and stout, (weigh 190)—keep up my activity and interest in life, people, progress, and the questions of the day. About two-thirds of the time I am quite comfortable. What mentality I ever had remains entirely unaffected; though physically I am a half-paralytic, and likely to be so, long as I live. But the principal object of my life seems to have been accomplish’d—I have the most devoted and ardent of friends, and affectionate relatives—and of enemies I really make no account.”
From an 1882 letter Walt Whitman wrote to a German friend.
The final book in Charles Burns’s Tintin-punk-rock-Interzone trilogy will be published by Pantheon this September. Time to revisit X’ed Out and The Hive.
“I’ve discovered a miracle in the rain — Joana thought — a miracle splintered into dense, solemn, glittering stars, like a suspended warning: like a lighthouse. What are they trying to tell me? In those stars I can foretell the secret, their brilliance is the impassive mystery I can hear flowing inside me, weeping at length in tones of romantic despair. Dear God, at least bring me into contact with them, satisfy my longing to kiss them. To feel their light on my lips, to feel it glow inside my body, leaving it shining and transparent, fresh and moist like the minutes that come before dawn. Why do these strange longings possess me? Raindrops and stars, this dense and chilling fusion has roused me, opened the gates of my green and sombre forest, of this forest smelling of an abyss where water flows. And harnessed it to night. Here, beside the window, the atmosphere is more tranquil. Stars, stars, zero. The word cracks between my teeth into fragile splinters. Because no rain falls inside me, I wish to be a star. Purify me a little and I shall acquire the dimensions of those beings who take refuge behind the rain.”
From Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart.
The Late Scholar is a new Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane mystery. Publisher’s blurb:
When a dispute among the Fellows of St. Severin’s College, Oxford University, reaches a stalemate, Lord Peter Wimsey discovers that as the Duke of Denver he is “the Visitor”—charged with the task of resolving the issue. It is time for Lord Peter and his detective novelist wife, Harriet, to revisit their beloved Oxford, where their long and literate courtship finally culminated in their engagement and marriage.
At first, the dispute seems a simple difference of opinion about a valuable manuscript that some of the Fellows regard as nothing but an insurance liability, which should be sold to finance a speculative purchase of land. The voting is evenly balanced. The Warden would normally cast the deciding vote, but he has disappeared. And when several of the Fellows unexpectedly die as well, Lord Peter and Harriet set off on an investigation to uncover what is really going on at St. Severin’s.
With this return in The Late Scholar to the Oxford of Gaudy Night, which many readers regard as their favorite of Sayers’s original series, Jill Paton Walsh at once revives the wit and brilliant plotting of the Golden Age of detective fiction.
Biblioklept 