Every once in a while he nails it.

This was a painful postcard to find a friend’s counter.

“If pure thought led anywhere but in circles he’d have solved the peeling since so it’s therefore time to act, but what is there to do …”

I didn’t really get this when I read it in 2017. Or I wanted a repeat of his first book, which I love. Now … intrigued.

The Institute for Nonprofit News (inn.org) is a great resource for independent news alternatives that meet high standards, including financial transparency. Some 400+ member orgs all across America.

"I was very unhappy trying to be a poet. I didn’t have the imagination. But when I turned 30 I realized that I could take things that were already in existence and do something with them. It was painting a still life as opposed to being Hieronymus Bosch..." Eliot Weinberger

I was once at a conference at Sundance and Robert Redford accidentally walked into our room. This was probably 10 years ago. He looked both a million years old AND like the most beautiful person I had ever seen. An odd, unexpected combination. The whole room gasped.

Highly recommended, especially for fans for Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas. Bitterness and rejection are a familiar cocktail.

As a young man, Charles Wright once found himself standing next to Ezra Pound beneath the porticos of Venice. They were both looking at the Basilica di San Marco but hearing different music. Wright thought about saying, “I like your poems.” But silence seemed best, and they parted. #inkstains

J.G. Ballard made his break writing by science fiction for magazines like New Worlds. Unlike many peers, however, he insisted the only alien planet is Earth and the final frontier is not outer but inner space. #inkstains

Friends went on to Princeton and Yale, but those doors were closed on Hunter S. Thompson, who was removed from a high school classroom in handcuffs and spent 30 days in jail before graduation. What Ivy League friends remember was not just the gonzo daring but his bedroom lined with books. #inkstains

Bruno Schulz always considered himself a citizen of the Republic of Dreams. #inkstains

Mavis Gallant’s adored father died when she was just 10, but no one told her for three years, until her mother was ready to remarry. She thought he was in England. #inkstains

At five, Flannery O’Connor trained a chicken to walk backwards, a feat so astonishing it made the local newsreel. Pretty much the high point, she later acknowledged. #inkstains

Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves. #vsnaipaul

Before and after.

A lifelong companion. #cavafy

Japanese cover for Philip K. Dick's VALIS. Surfaced by Daniel Kalder, one of my favorite end of the world flaneurs.

Kafka’s first book, Mediation, sold eleven copies at a local bookstore. Having bought 10 of them himself, he was mystified by who might have picked up the 11th. #kafka #inkstains

Borges’ History of Eternity, published in 1932, sold 37 copies. He imagined tracking down each of his readers and thanking them personally. #borges #inkstains

Flannery O’Connor described her first novel, Wise Blood – about a tormented, amoral street-preacher-against-God who binds his body in barbed wire, blinds himself, and ends up dead in a ditch – as autobiographical. Also a comedy. Her mom stopped after nine pages. #inkstains

In a single year, 1906, Félix Fénéon wrote more than a thousand stories. Each in just three lines. They would have disappeared along with so much other ephemera but for his mistress, who kept clippings from the newspapers where they ran in her scrap book. #inkstains

Once Gertrude Stein’s ambition was to describe every type of person who ever had or might exist. She considered her major obstacle to be time. #inkstains

Beneath a dining table, the child who would become Annie Dillard curled up at Evan S. Connell’s feet and dreamt of marriage. Women wrote him notes like this: “What are the chances of your coming to Toronto to see me on stage with no clothes on?” The chances were good. #inkstains

Olga Tokarczuk has lived next door to three different translators of William Blake. #tokarczuk #books

Hey @europaeditions.bsky.social. Just re-reading this strange favorite. One of the saddest, loneliest books I know.

When Gravity’s Rainbow won the National Book Award, it was received, on Thomas Pynchon’s behalf, by Professor Irwin Corey, the world’s foremost authority. Subject matter ambiguous. #inkstains #pynchon

Within two weeks, Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women, published 11 years after her death, outsold all the books she’d published during her lifetime. #inkstains #luciaberlin

The Chilean writer Samanta Schweblin has sought to emulate the wartime experience of her grandfather who, at just 17, would sneak at night as close to the German lines as he could get in hopes of overhearing the enemy discuss their plans. Victory was returning alive. #inkstains

Renata Adler spent New Years Eve in New York with an older community of Germany refugees and intellectuals, people like Kafka’s publisher. When she insisted she needed to be asleep by midnight, they assumed she was slipping out for another party or perhaps to meet a lover. She wasn’t. #inkstains

Between 1948 and 1977, Philip K. Dick was generally married, although five different women were involved. #inkstains #philipkdick

Two years before Money, Martin Amis published Invasion of the Space Invaders: An Addicts Guide to Battle Tactics, Big Scores and the Best Machines. Today a used copy on Amazon lists at $989.47. #inkstains

Among other things, Olga Tokarczuk’s first boyfriend introduced her to Bruno Schulz. #inkstains

Metaphors came to William Gass in squadrons. On the other hand, lines of poetry approach Anne Carson like glaciers out of the dark while she steers her ship toward the South Pole. #inkstains

When invited to participate in a Parisian event for the hundred greatest living writers, Patricia Highsmith declined. She had no doubt she was among the greatest, but alive? That was less clear. #inkstains

After being imprisoned for gross indecency, Oscar Wilde had his library card revoked. #inkstains

Such a pleasure to review @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social’s stunning new book, “Is a River Alive?” For @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social. lareviewofbooks.org/article/what...

Saint Paul

The Argentine novelist Antonio Di Benedetto stood in front of a firing squad four times. #inkstains #books #writers

Cora Taylor ran a brothel in Jacksonville. Slightly after, she became a war correspondent in the Greco-Turkish War. In between, she met Stephen Crane. #inkstains #writers #books

Patrick Leigh Fermor was expelled from a school for difficult children. He walked from Holland to Istanbul in a year, journey that took another 33 to become a book. In between, he lived with a Romanian noblewoman, kidnapped a German general, & spent time in monasteries and silence. #inkstains #books

Tolstoy belittled Rilke for his interest in writing lyric poems. #inkstains #poets #rilke

Italo Svevo wrote two books in his thirties, which are forgotten although Joyce admired them. And then, after nearly a thirty year silence, The Confessions of Zeno, which is not. #inkstains #writers #books

It took Italo Calvino either twenty-nine years or thirty days to write The Cloven Viscount. #inkstains #books #writers #calvino

Those who knew Marcel Proust in his youth, even the extended youth of his twenties, expected very little from him. #inkstains #books #writers

Lawrence Durrell, author of The Alexandria Quartet, made a life changing discovery in a public toilet: a discarded copy of Henry Miller’s The Tropic of Cancer. #inkstains #books #writers

Elias Canetti’s wife wrote to his brother: “No document that gives access to Canetti’s inmost being must be allowed to survive.” #inkstains #booksky #writers

I'm looking for writers best known for their fictions, but who started out as poets: Denis Johnson, Bohumil Hrabal, Michael Ondaatje, Roberto Bolano, Thomas Hardy. Can you think of others? #booksky #writers #books

I need of list of other women who re-named themselves as writers: Anna Akmatova, Marguerite Yourcenar, Flannery O’Conner, George Eliot, Anna Kavan, Jean Rhys, Elena Ferrante. I'm sure there are many, many others. Suggestions? #bookskys #writers #books