“Don’t Read Books”: The Final Meal

When J asked me the other day what I would consider to be the perfect final meal, I found it both a simple and a challenging question—simple in that I don’t require fireworks on the plate to be impressed, as one’s final meal should just be one’s favorite food cooked to perfection, but difficult in [...]

“The Death of the Author”

I hesitated some time, not knowing whether to open these memoirs at the beginning or at the end, i. e., whether to start with my birth or with my death. Granted, the usual practice is to begin with one’s birth, but two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that, properly [...]

“Inaesthetic stains”

. . . No one could ever accuse death of having left behind in the world some forgotten old man of no particular merit and for no apparent reason merely for him to grow ever older. We all know that, however long old people may last, their hour will always come. Not a day passes [...]

“Home”

Thoughts on a Quiet Night
by Li Pai
Before my bed the light is so bright
it looks like a layer of frost
lifting my head I gaze at the moon
lying back down I think of home
—from Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology
of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse, translated by Red Pine
Li Pai (701–762), aka Li Po, was born [...]

“A belated beautifying”

 

I react to capricious accidents of light and shadow with a feeling of joy and warmth, and, perhaps even more, with a vague sense of joy yet to come, a feeling inseparable from what I call, for want of a better expression, a belated beautifying. For example, the late afternoon of a long day of [...]

“Winter ends”

In Reply
by the Ancient Recluse
Somehow I ended up beneath pines
sleeping in comfort on boulders
there aren’t any calendars in the mountains
winter ends but who counts the years
—from Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology
of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse, translated by Red Pine
Nothing is known of the author of this poem, other than that he lived in [...]

“An interesting kind of madness”

QUESTION: How did you ever dream up Pierre Menard, the author of the Quixote?
BORGES: I had undergone an operation, and I didn’t know whether I could go on writing. Then I said to myself, if I attempt a short critical essay and fail, then I’ll know there’s no hope left for me. If I’d attempted [...]

“There is too much noise in your poems,” said Franz Kafka

I have to turn in something for my writing group tomorrow, and I’ve been poring over Gustav Janouch’s Conversations with Kafka for inspiration; three possible stories have arisen. Whether Janouch’s memoir is true or not doesn’t matter to me at this point; in fact, the debate is part of the fun. I am certainly not reading it [...]

A reading room

Read Flaubert aloud with satisfaction.
—Franz Kafka, March 16, 1912, from Diaries: 1910–1923
Been wondering lately what a whole separate reading room in abode might look like. It would have bookshelves, of course, and sofa, as well as large window and rocking chair (or two or three). Plus turntable and crate of Bessie Smiths. Blank notebooks for jotting down inanities. And no laptop or phone, [...]

Added to my Shelf

Just added new first sentences up on my Shelf from works by Paul LaFarge, Nathanael West, and Monique Wittig, as well as more by Italo Calvino and Rainer Maria Rilke.
Enjoy.

“Old, familiar stories”

Copying what’s been done previously allows for this sort of “originality” [newish, but not entirely original]. And it’s often done in cases which one wouldn’t consider plagiarism: reliance on old, familiar stories has always been popular in writing. Which is where another defining aspect of plagiarism comes in: deception. If acknowledged, variations on another author’s [...]

“Objection”

Dear ———:
We were very glad to receive your letter with regard to Mr. ———’s “———” because we are naturally quite aware of your work and position, and respect your judgment. We are certainly very far from regarding your views as old-fashioned: in fact, it is easy for us to sympathize with your objection to the [...]

“Weeds”

It’s not that the books are checked out. They’re just gone. No one was reading them, so librarians took them off the shelves and dumped them.
Along with those classics, thousands of novels and nonfiction works have been eliminated from the Fairfax County collection after a new computer software program showed that no one had checked [...]

“Useless”

In the large room there was the clamour of card playing and later the usual conversation which Father carries on when he is well, as he is today, loudly if not coherently. The words represented only small shapes in a formless clamour. Little Felix slept in the girls’ room, the door of which was wide [...]

“Energy”

I seem to have done a great deal during the last week, but I suppose not so much as you. The multitude of our actions surprises me; our energy is really marvellous, and no wonder we sometimes sink into weeks of sloth. I have been to two plays, a concert, have written a review, and [...]