Recommended Reading (Inauguration Day edition): “Haecceity” by Joshua Clover.
“you have not thought thru clearly”
Terry Castle
Behold the polymathic mind of Terry Castle, professor, literary essayist, and collage artist. At Fevered Brain Productions, her art blog, see digitally alter photos and collages like “Warthog Proffering Rootbeer,” “She Polarizes People,” “Collage Dramas”, and “Kind Hearts and Coronets.” And from the LRB archives, check out her controversial quasi-eulogy for Susan Sontag, her reviews (for example, Always the Bridesmaid on Yopie Prins‘ Victorian Sappho), and her essays (Travels With My Mom). The Professor, Castle’s forthcoming book of essays, will be published by HarperCollins in January.
Write Across America
The folks at Write By Night are embarking on a quest to organize State Writing Resources (“from conferences to local critique groups to literary magazines”) for all fifty states in our nation. The first two destinations on the docket? Alabama and Alaska, respectively.
“How do I know it’s real?”
Twenty-five years ago this month, Mary Gaitskill published Bad Behavior, a story collection so accomplished that even Michiko Kakutani thought the book had “radar-perfect detail.” Now, to commemorate the anniversary, The Slant interviews Gaitskill, who discusses her debut and the effect of porn on our culture. (In case you didn’t know, a story in Bad Behavior inspired the movie Secretary.)
The Greatest Biscuits in the World
It’s funny and fitting that Madame Proust, in a letter now on display at the Morgan Library, implored her son to share persnickety details about what time he got up in the morning. Another thing the exhibition, which celebrates the hundredth anniversary of Swann’s Way, reveals: early drafts of the book used “biscottes” in place of “madeleine.”
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