it has some glaring flaws, but the wonder lies in what this text IS. it is amateur commentary of a commentary of a film record of a house that doesn't exist. the text is the house. it is void. it has no meaning. we, in our relationship to it- manifest that meaning. and that is a powerful thought

iggy, my big beautiful sturdy girlie- being told by the vet that she weighs 17 lbs

i turned 40 yesterday, which, y'know- whatever. but today i'm officially 7 years booze free i spent my entire life feeling alienated and out of place, and the first sober years were no different. but today I can say with real honesty that I know and like the human i am and girl? that ain't nothin

oh, and this came out today. and it's fucking bonkers. best fucking birthday present imaginable.

tradition is tradition. #Halloweentree

been well over a decade since i've crossed this bridge. but it's spooky season and i'm all out of ideas.

the boy's still got it critics may be calling it a minor work - believing everything from the man's pen should be the heir to Joyce that the one from 50 years ago was (and still is). the definition of unrealistic expectation but even minor Pynchon is better than the major of just about anyone else

Laszlo Krasznahorkai just won the nobel for literature- and I am once again seeking the emotional support needed to make it through the 7hr film adaptation of his novel "Satantango" this is admittedly a hard sell, but ya gotta admire my persistence

So how do you know it's fall? Me:

if you take "Tristram..." along with Quixote, it becomes clear that the metafictional play and experimentation that propelled the novel to new heights in the 20th century (ie. modernism, post, and further) has in fact been baked into the form since the very beginning.

almost all of my literary heroes are dead and Pynchon is no spring chicken- meaning that i don't get "literary events" that often. this is a special day- but we should be celebrating every day we still have him with us. one of the last truly original and monumental voices of postwar American lit.

it was even better than my EXTREMELY HIGH expectations could have hoped for. 10 fucking stars.

criterion channel has an Altman retrospective going on for his 100th and I took the opportunity to revisit "Nashville" last night. 1st- holy shit I still looooove this movie. 2nd- it is exactly the statement on political violence in America we have been ignoring for (checks watch) 50 goddamn years

If I don't go out to the coast at least once a year- to stare pensively at the pacific while listen to specifically THIS track; assume I'm dead.

this was a fantastic read- by someone with limited education who nevertheless felt an intense drive to engage with literature in a way that I feel is one of the core reasons that form of artistic expression exists... namely to reconcile our relationship with death. absolutely phenomenal

is "drunken desperation attempting to reveal something hidden about who we are as a people" a genre?

I caught this one at Portland Center Stage last spring, and as soon as I picked my jaw off the floor and quelled my rage at never being exposed to it before- i knew i had to read it. and yeah. alongside "godot" and maybe "vanya" and some Tennessee Williams- it's one of the best fucking plays. ever.

this novel has been haunting me for my whole life. it was constructed from real pain. and yearning. and hope pkd says the novel is him. it's me too. its journey is mine. so are its losses. and as I reached the final trembling word of phil's note, I once again cried and did not stop for a long time

despite its silliness, Vineland is ultimately a tragedy. of the entropic, mean-spirited, Reagan-era death-trip payback against a counterculture that wanted nothing more than to find a peaceful corner of this world to dissappear into. you'll weap and mourn- but laugh to grasp at an impossible hope..

is entropy a genre?

Bolaño's existence in prose is ruled by a constellation of 3 stars. The first two (Cervantes, Borges) can probably be said about close to every Spanish language writer. The crucial 3rd is Cortázar- indeed I can't see how Bolaño's literature of the Latin American diaspora exists without him...

i was recently gifted my grandmother's 1940s smith-corona, and holy shit y'all— manually typing shit out while spinning records is basically heaven and I'm pretty upset that it took me until the cusp of middle age to figure that out

there is no finer food in this world than fresh oregon grown sungold tomatoes. and as the season draws to a close, I am preparing to go into mourning. this is why i can never leave.

i reread this one after many years; a collection of articles, written in the last 5 years of his life- that's the closest thing to a Bolaño memoir we're going to get. it's a miracle for a lot of reasons- one of which is the most succinct definition of the power of literature that I've ever read.

i'm sorry. i'm in my "paint me like a dutch painting" era, and i couldn't hear you

it's the end-all be-all of travel novels. the pinnacle of the form. and the best we've done as people since the fucking odyssey. believe. the. hype.

just me, the girls, and elizabeth taylor

my corner of the world is real special

that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life.

in general- i tend to avoid "living under totalitarianism" spec fic. i don't need to be reminded that I was born in resistance and will likely die here too. that said, I'm glad I made time for this one, with it's themes of "art as a generative tool for resistance"

I had the absolute blessing of being present and in the front row for this. it's been a hard year for the lynch community. hold your weirdos close and in your heart :(

there's a blurb on the back of my copy of The Echo Maker that says: "Any Powers is better than the best of almost anybody else." and at 3 books in, i think I can safely say that that is a VAST understatement.

my review of the new swans album: swans doesn't make albums. they make sweatlodges. and don't get me wrong- i believe it's entirely possible to reach transcendence of the self with 'em were one so inclined but it's just kinda a lot to go through to get there tho, y'know?

if you were ever wondering who played violin on bad seeds songs b4 warren came along- it was nick's mom apparently?

tradition is tradition

Iso: 3-5 friends that are cool with not being friends for much longer.

i think the central reason so many of the pomos were drawn to the "mystery" or the "detective story" - as unconventional as the execution may be; was bc they bear the closest structural similarity to how we use language to unearth, uncover and make meaning.

it's sold out. portland certainly has it's problems- but holy fuck I love living here.

iggy is experiencing her first heat-related existential crisis of the summer. there will be many more.

one of the many miraculous bits of "Bleeding Edge" is TP keeping his finger firmly on the pulse of the cultural zeitgeist of early 00s usa- at a time when about every member of his generation was willfully ignoring / criminally misinterpreting it then manages to give me the only lecture I'll accept

status update of my life slowly turning into a fucking jimmy buffett song.

i'm ignoring my early-ass baker's bedtime to go to this and you should too.

please excuse me i need to go cry forever.

the girls of summer

I think we- as a people have gotten a lot better at thinking/talking about grief. therapeutic discourse has moved into the mainstream and I think most of us can notice and name a grief process when we see one. still- why DeLillo's body artist isn't a part of this conversation is fucking beyond me

holy shit, y'all. this is not a fucking drill. new tommy p incoming.... (note: after pynchon sold/donated his literary archives last year, I took that as a sign that he was done. i couldn't be more thrilled to be proven dead wrong)

always a hoot to read a stylistically idiosyncratic author's first works- and to see who they were aping. kerouac wanted to be steinbeck. hunter thompson wanted to be hemmingway or fitzgerald. and mcarthy wanted to be faulkner soooo fucking bad- it'd be funny if it weren't so breathtaking

got to go to church last Saturday night- and I'm a better man for it.

even without its middle section- SC would enter immortal ranks in the sprawling revisionist western pantheon but it's this section detailing the doomed efforts of a literary son and his attempts to know and reconcile his dead outlaw father- that places this work among the best of 21st century lit

I made it as fast as I could so y'all can breathe a lil easier lol music.youtube.com/playlist?lis...