Ford Madox Ford’s Xmas Provençal chicken
This year, instead of a tree, we decorated Max’s beloved pole lamp. He calls the result a “3-way collision between Festivus austerity, Xmas kitsch, and midcentury modernism.”
I call it, “We can take all that down on the 1st, right?”
Christmas Day was an intimate and jolly affair. Joseph brought his cornbread-sausage-fennel stuffing and [...]
Lump of coal holiday stories: Rosie Schaap’s Xmas ‘89
Rosie Schaap’s Great Big Lump of Coal party for her good words @ Good World series was great fun. After the reading, she told Dana, Max, and me a story involving the best and maybe the most inappropriate holiday toast ever. I’m not allowed to post that one.
Instead here’s an Xmas [...]
Lump of coal holiday stories: Brent Cox’s Thanksgiving
A few weeks ago, I put out a call for your worst holiday experiences. My friend Brent of Titivil disqualified himself because his entry (below) was longer than I’d specified. He wins anyway. It’s a moving, atmospheric story, and also, he’s the only one who entered.
Terrible holiday story? [...]
Playwright, activist Harold Pinter dies
“Since I’ve come out of my cancer, I must say I intend to be even more of a pain in the arse.” R.I.P., Harold Pinter.
The impetus for A Christmas Carol
Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in six weeks, to pay off his debt. The week it went on sale, in 1843, the book sold 6000 copies.
Re-reading a wife’s beloved Bolaño after her death
Francisco Goldman’s smart & vivacious wife Aura died tragically last year. At TEV he recalls her possessive love for Bolaño.
On visiting Dickens’ only surviving London house
A conversation about literary pilgrimages with my favorite Poe fan last week reminded me that I never told you about my visit to the Charles Dickens Museum in London. The delay is fortuitous, I guess, because really, what better time than now to talk about the house of The [...]
Banned in Cupertino?
Is Apple banning books? CNET editor David Carnoy’s self-published Knife Music was rejected for “objectionable content.”
2008 novels for the iPhone just the tip of the Iceberg
The minute you meet ScrollMotion co-founder Josh Koppel, you know you’re in the company of a visionary. Intense, smart, and unpretentious — quick-thinking and quick-talking — Koppel is a writer whose unconventional memoir appeared just after September 11, 2001, and in short order wound up in a landfill.
The experience would have left many [...]
Engdahl, secretary of Nobel Prize body, resigns post
Horace Engdahl, the Swedish Academy secretary who has called Europe the center of the literary world, will step down.
An attempt to convey the magnitude of Borges’ library
The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel, which I dip into when I’m feeling brave, quantifies the collection. (Via.)
AL Kennedy finishes story collection, is blogging
Released from the venomous brain tumor that was her latest writing project, AL Kennedy blogs.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at Christmas
Every Christmas, Laura Miller re-reads C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. (More on her adventures in Narnia.)
The Cupertino Effect: Common errors in an auto-correct world
“Word had turned him into a foodstuff: Professor Schnitzel.” In trying to correct errors, Word & Excel have created new ones.
It is not a boner to use effete this way — DFW
The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus (2nd Ed.) incorporates usage notes from contributing authors including Erin McKean, Stephin Merritt, Zadie Smith, Simon Winchester, Francine Prose, and David Foster Wallace. (Eternal disclosure.)
Looking for something else last night, I discovered this note, signed “DFW & EM,” on “effete”:
Here’s a word on which some dictionaries and useage [...]