Zone Johnston, my granny’s father, was always dragging his wife and kids to carpentry jobs throughout Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and beyond, and then abandoning them in favor of a new pretty face. According to my mom, “[his wife’s] people would have to come to where they were and take them home until Zone finished his work and wandered back . . .
The New York Public Library’s “From Revolution to Republic in Prints and Drawings” exhibition runs through July 7. There you can see “An Exact View of the Late Battle of Charlestown, June 17, 1775,” contemplate “The Fruits of Arbitrary Power, or The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street” (above), enjoy the political cartoons of the day, and gaze at . . .
“I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”
HBO to invent sleeping pill in the form of literary adaptation. Or maybe you’re a fan of the Bascombe trilogy. (Via.)
On Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus: How mysterious is a mysterious text if Calvino wrote the introduction? (Via.)