Many thanks to @gerryfeehily.bsky.social for his thoughtful, in-depth interview with me in 3:AM! www.3ammagazine.com/3am/ulysses-...

Pleased that Granta 175 features excerpts from Lars Norén's five-volume diaries, translated from the Swedish by Sigrid Rausing. (Hope for a selected diaries volume at some point.)

Auerbach 'had to melancholically embrace the idea of the disappearance of libraries in order to find within himself the power to write a book that would be able to outlast all libraries.' —William Marx, 'Libraries of the Mind'

Irresistible.

On Antoine Volodine's novel The Monroe Girls, an abject post-apocalyptic romantic comedy biblioklept.org/2026/05/07/o...

My GOODNESS does Antoine Volodine ever sleep?!? www.upress.umn.edu/978151791977...

'We had no explanation when we interrogated ourselves about humanity's bad choices." — Antoine Volodine

Sorting Volodine’s Plants Antoine Volodine's Radiant Terminus (2014, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, 2017) names dozens of plants growing on its irradiated steppe. A few are real. Most are not. The list below is an exercise in botanical glossolalia: French folk-naming, Russian loanwords,…

New translation next year!

Starting this on strong recommendation: Volodine's major novel, apparently the fullest entry into his 'post-exoticism' universe. (Zuckerman's translation much praised.)

Even now, what I love above all else, is form, provided it be beautiful and nothing beyond it. Gustave Flaubert, letter to Louise Colet, 1846

Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds.

‘Oh well, I am not a philosopher at all; I just teach philosophy . . . . Second-rate philosophers are dreary, really dreary beyond belief, and how many great philosophers are there?’ William Gass, in the ‘Dutch Quarterly Review’

Happy birthday, David. I enjoyed the Kate Briggs episode very much. I’d love to listen to a conversation with Alice Oswald. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b...

Borges’ Longwinded Catalog 'We haven't changed a bit, I thought.' Jorge Luis Borges, whom William Gass described as 'a man made civilised by the library'. I could spend a life in patient study of his stories. In The Other from The Book of Sand he offers a 'longwinded catalog'. All his lists are…

Just read a commenter explaining that British children's top three fears in the early eighties were: rabies, quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle. This is TRUE.

‘My work is probably best characterised as late or decayed Modern end of the road sort of thing, last gasp.’ - It seems I’ve taken a liking to the voice of decayed modernist William Gass.

New review: Daniel Hahn on "The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation", in 𝐼𝑓 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝐵𝑒 𝑀𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑐 www.complete-review.com/reviews/tran...

The contents page of Denise Riley's 'Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect' suggests an ideal companion to follow James Elkins' brilliant 'A Short Introduction to Anneliese' (what words do to us and fail to do). It was either that or a cover-to-cover reading of Fowler's (still tempting).

Harold Pinter in Krapp's Last Tape on BBC4 this evening at 9pm, followed by a programme about Beckett. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

What chances a translation into English of Hans Haider’s forthcoming biography of Friederike Mayröcker? @wordkunst.bsky.social

‘Writing to A.R. Ammons in 1972, Bloom said, “I’m not an artist or a critic, or a hybrid of the two, but something older and less, a reader.”’ [From Henry Oliver, The Common Reader’s latest email.]

Philip II of Macedonia asked Sparta (region of Laconia) whether he should come as friend or foe. The reply was ‘Neither.’ He sent another message, ‘If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out.’ The Spartans replied with a single word: ‘If.’

Immense Thomas Mann riches ahead. The (fabulous) John Woods translations getting the Penguin Classics treatment, a full set of new translations from Oxford Classics AND a new translation of Magic Mountain by Susan Bernofsky.

Thought-Whelmed Reading James Elkins, A Short Introduction to Anneliese, Unamed Press. It is the second volume of Five Strange Languages. Elkins explains, 'You can read each book by itself. They are entirely independent of each other. Each is different, with its own style, mood, and stories',…

Scott Abbott's beautiful tribute to his friend, the poet Alex Caldiero. wp.me/p2VlSS-2KU

“This was the moment I longed for every day. Settling at a heavy inn table, thawing and tingling.” Starting in deep midwinter snow “A Time Of Gifts” is instantly magical and somehow innocent and pre-lapsarian. Paddy Leigh-Fermor arrives at a German inn. And settles down to think.

James Elkins: “A Short Introduction to Anneliese: the fascination and insanity of complex books. Begins with a 200 page rant. . . . At its center is a hundred-page chapter in which Anneliese talks about long books.”

Easter plans.

Reminded of Larkin’s poem ‘Coming’ today with the longer, lighter Spring evening

Ite domum saturae, venit Hesperus, ite capellae.

The Late Arrival

Celan in the late and early hours.

My aunt's copy of 'Story of O'.

When you look back on the works that have moved you, you find that they have always been written out of some kind of necessity. There's something calling out to you, some human call, that makes you want to listen to the work. In the end, it probably has very little to do with literature. Paul Auster

“The sheaves refuse my bonds. In this infinite, unanimous dissonance, each ear of corn, each drop of blood, speaks its language and goes its way. The torch, which lights the abyss, which seals it up, is itself an abyss.” — Jacques Dupin (from “Lichens,” tr. Paul Auster)

Pascal Quignard in an interview (2020): “We do not know where the word ‘literature’ comes from. I love infinitely that there are two words whose etymology is entirely unknown: *eros* and *literature*. I love that words emerge from the night like comets.”

Two new installments in the @Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature, published by @oxunipress.bsky.social Bi-lingual editions (Mandarin/English on facing pages) covering 3,000 years of Sinitic literatures. #literatureintranslation #chineseliteratureintranslation

'Blackbirds & Ravens' contemporary ceramic sculpture by Kathleen Sukiennik

Another pastoral English classic, paired well with 'Cold Comfort Farm', though Lee is sincere where Gibbons is subversive.

This painting depicts Vilhelm Hammershøi's sister Anna, who was two years his junior. It is one of the earliest known works by him of a figure viewed from behind. The picture created a sensation when it was first exhibited in 1885.

Stella Gibbons prose is genuinely accomplished. A bit of an outlier for me, but it is very good at what it does. Wonderful control. I'll be rereading, I imagine.

M. Boissonade.

One of the briefest yet most beguiling flames: Beautiful, blighted Vaslav Nijinsky, who revolutionized ballet & choreography, born on this day in 1889.

‘Thought-whelmed’. A word Stella Gibbons coins in ‘Cold Comfort Farm’: His body sunk into the immemorial posture of a man thought-whelmed. . . Humanity left him abruptly.

I enjoy thinking through Lydia Davis’s Essays. I catch her mind and follow.

“I write because I need to say something I do not know.” [J’écris parce que j’ai besoin de dire quelque chose que j’ignore.] — Pascal Quignard (interview, 2001)

Pascal Quignard: “I’m a firm believer in the distance between the hand that writes and the eyes that read, and that this distance can’t be augmented: it’s an infinite gap. Hand and eye are not located in the same body.” (from Albucius, tr. Bruce Boone)

the fascination of trifles; the enchantment of frivolity; the spell of worthless things; the seduction of nonsense; the charm of idle pursuits; the lure of empty pleasures; the enticement of meaningless diversions; the allure of trivial things; the spell of slight things