Archive for April, 2007

Waiting for The Blue Hour

The Blue Hour, a Jean Rhys biography named for her favorite perfume, was due out early this year, but so far there are only rolling tumbleweeds.

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Flaubert’s letters to himself

In college I kept a journal — now destroyed, obviously, along with most incriminating photos — in which I evinced a penchant for copying out overwrought quotations from Flaubert’s letters. I’ve forgotten most of them, but a particular favorite (from a letter to his lover) was: “What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are . . .

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Vonnegut joins Fox News hit list

As if I didn’t loathe Fox News enough already: “By the late ’70s, Vonnegut was rich and irrelevant, the subject of other people’s books, and a sacred cow of the New York literary scene.”

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Calabash 2007

Geoffrey Philp has the skinny on the year’s Calabash International Literary Festival. Akashic, which is putting out Colin Channer’s The Girl with the Golden Shoes, will be there.

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