A friend’s mother thought Billy looked like a living corpse. Sensitive to the repulsion he sometimes evoked in strangers, the comment haunted him for years, but with time William S. Burroughs could disagree with her assessment while acknowledging he might be of a different species.

Ann Beattie: no one but Beckett could be quite so funny and sad at the same time. David Foster Wallace: his Wittgenstein’s Mistress is pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in the 20th century. Alice Denham remembered him as literary, witty, handsome, and hung.

Always read Weinberger. "He walked back to Calcutta alone. On his voyage home, he survived a shipwreck in the Java Sea and was marooned on an uninhabited island. Ultimately securing passage on a second ship, along with an orangutang, he stopped off for a visit with Napoleon on Saint Helena."

"Certainly I am nearer to becoming a saint," reflected Miss Goering, "but is it possible that part me hidden from my sight is piling sin upon sin as fast as Mrs. Copperfield?" This latter possibility Miss Goering thought to be of considerable interest but of no great importance. #twoseriousladies

"...I have thought for a long time now that often, so very often, heroes who believe themselves to be monsters because they are so far removed from other men turn around much later and see really monstrous acts being committed in the name of something mediocre." #twoseriousladies #janebowles

Many oddities here, but perhaps the most obvious: who washes their fingernail clippings down the drain?

Arthur Conan Doyle once said that the secret of his success was that he never forced a story. As he lay dying, surrounded by family, he looked at them one by one. And said nothing.

Bracing for first snow.

From the age of 19, Anton Chekov provided for his family. And others too. He helped found clinics, hospitals, schools, and libraries. He wrote hundreds of stories, thousands of letters, including one that read, “There is a great crocodile ensconced within you, Lika.”

“The emptier a room the smaller it seems. This is true of minds as well.”

Terrific book, but probably due for a second edition.

@revelliterary.bsky.social, if the writing is equal to the production, this will be amazing. What a beautifully produced magazine. Why we still love the printed word. #books #booksky

Was thrilled to help consult for this fantastic John Oliver segment on the tragic plight of U.S. public media and why, if we hope to be a democracy, we still need public media for so many things that commercial media will never provide. Deserves a wide viewership. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yknM...

Public media as you may not have seen in before. Oliver makes a compelling case that it goes far beyond NPR and PBS, and that what local stations mean to local communities is irreplaceable. @lastweektonight.com #publicmedia www.youtube.com/watch?v=yknM...

www.theparisreview.org/letters-essa... Paris Review Newsletter

“I am dying. I haven’t drunk champagne for a long time.” The causal relationship between Anton Chekhov’s last words intrigues. Hope you don't mind the shout out, @dseuss.bsky.social

Japan now produces more nappies for incontinent adults than for infants. #signsoftheapocolypse www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tennessee Williams specified in his will that he should be sewn up in a canvas sack and buried at sea as close as possible to the site where Hart Crane drowned. Tennessee Williams is buried in a St. Louis cemetery near his mother.

Don't we all love looking, as a wonderful poet observed, at dead things? A good season for that perspective. Thanks to @robbiemaakestad.bsky.social @mattweiland.bsky.social @therumpus.net. Companion piece from a WIP appearing soon in @revelliterary.bsky.social #booksky therumpus.net/2025/11/10/t...

“People read Foucault,” the redoubtable David Brooks once wrote ... “and develop an alienated view of the world.” ... Not by, like, trying to pay rent or having an insurance claim denied—no, no, it was probably the Foucault you read in 2003. lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

When Jack Gilbert’s first book won the Yale Younger Poets Prize, no one knew how to find him. No phone, no address, no trail. Eventually the brother-in-law of his ex-girlfriend tracked him down at an East Village squat. To celebrate, they went for milkshakes.

“We would spend the whole day doing nothing but criticizing poetry and talking about painting.” A nice life Shen Fu led.

Walk?

A mostly tedious writer but fascinating character. www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/1...

Really? Adult content? A link to a wikipedia page "List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events". I think the kids can handle it.

Helpful perspective.

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