Roberto Bolaño crochet doll by Santo Crochet; via Matt Bucher on Twitter
Tag: Art
David Markson, Cormac McCarthy, Slavoj Žižek (Books Acquired, 5.19.2012)
I ordered David Markson’s Reader’s Block from my local book shop, and intended to get it—and only it—this Saturday. Somehow I took a detour through the film section and picked up the Žižek and didn’t put it back; in the same section I also picked up McCarthy’s screenplay The Gardener’s Son, which is the only thing I haven’t read by him to date, so I picked it up too. So there you go.
Woman Reading to a Little Girl — Felix Vallotton
Farmer Sitting at the Fireside and Reading — Vincent van Gogh
A Brief History of Artist John Baldessari, Narrated by Tom Waits
Albrecht of Brandenburg as St. Jerome in His Study — Lucas Cranach the Elder
William Gaddis’s Self-Portrait
Lot and His Daughters — Joachim Wtewae
Swift Cat — Ellen June
(More/via).
John Steinbeck: “I have never been a title man”
I have never been a title man. I don’t give a damn what it is called. I would call it [East of Eden] Valley to the Sea, which is a quotation from absolutely nothing but has two great words and a direction. What do you think of that? And I’m not going to think about it anymore.
From John Steinbeck’s 1969 interview in The Paris Review.
Young Girl Reading — Federico Zandomeneghi
Ralph Ellison: “I recognize no dichotomy between art and protest”
INTERVIEWER
Then you consider your novel a purely literary work as opposed to one in the tradition of social protest.
ELLISON
Now, mind, I recognize no dichotomy between art and protest. Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground is, among other things, a protest against the limitations of nineteenth-century rationalism; Don Quixote, Man’s Fate, Oedipus Rex, The Trial—all these embody protest, even against the limitation of human life itself. If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?
Don Quixote Reading — Honore Daumier
Monstrum Humanum — Ulisse Aldrovandi
Margaret Atwood’s Self-Portrait
Book Shelves #20, 5.13.2012
1.4. Things which aren’t books but are often met with in libraries
Photographs in gilded brass frames, small engravings, pen and ink drawings, dried flowers in stemmed glasses, matchbox-holders containing, or not, chemical matches (dangerous), lead soldiers, a photograph of Ernest Renan in his study at the College de France, postcards, dolls’ eyes, tins, packets of salt, pepper and mustard from Lufthansa, letter-scales, picture hooks, marbles, pipe-cleaners, scale models of vintage cars, multicoloured pebbles and gravel, ex-votos, springs.
—From Georges Perec’s essay “The Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books”
Book shelves series #20, twentieth Sunday of 2012: In Which I Try to Prove I Am Not Just Phoning It In
Last week I was accused of “going through the motions” with this project, which accusation may or may not be true. I was out of town on vacation, and last week’s post was composed a few days ahead of time in a harried rush of end-of-the-semester grading + summer semester planning + packing + bad bad writer’s block.
The shelf featured last week is the top shelf in the shot above.
Here is a detail of the shelf below, which clearly features things which are not books:
My wife and I—not actually married at the time, kids really—bought these kokeshi dolls when we were living in Japan. We lived in Tokyo, but I’m almost positive we bought these on a vacation in Kyoto. (Or maybe it was in Kamakura. Or I suppose it could have been in Tokyo).
The screen in the background was a gift from a student, as was the screen in the shot below, a shelf that twins this one (if anyone cares at all, the shelf would be sequenced between shelves 10 and 11).
Portrait of William Butler Yeats by His Father John Butler Yeats
