Rick Harsch on the I.W.W.

Enjoy Rick Harsch on Iowa's Frank Conroy, Marilynne Robinson, and James Alan McPherson.

The Branson Pilgrim

I'm enjoying "The Branson Pilgrim" by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi in the May 2024 print issue of Harper's Magazine.

second-hand books

"But it’s mostly about the “inclusions” that Royle finds in various second-hand books. The title derives from Royle’s eccentric habit of seeking out those books in second-hand bookshops distinguished by what he calls “shadow lines”, the tell-tale mark at the top edge of a book that indicates someone has left something inside – a bus ticket, a postcard, a drawing, anything. While the rest of us might toss away such dreck, Royle cherishes his finds, and indeed does his utmost to reunite them with their original owners, or at least to discover their identity. As you can imagine, this results in some charming and rather peculiar encounters."

~~ from The Telegraph's "A book about books, for book sort of people" by Ian Samsom

One False Step

"One False Step is the story of Clay Bowers, a philanderer, whose wandering eye lands him into trouble when, in an instance of darkly humorous irony, he falls off a roof while ogling the lady of the house, rendering him a paraplegic. As he is recovering in the hospital, he realizes that 'The thought that he might not be able to do anything (sic)…that he might only be able to lie there and think for the rest of his life, would eventually drive him over the edge.'"

~~ from "The Rage of Impotence: a review of Mark SaFranko’s One False Step" by Zsolt Alapi

TBR

The recent Salman Rushdie sighting led me to this BBC take, and The Chronicle of Higher Education's article on the New York Intellectuals sent me googling all the way back to Irving Howe in 1969.

Thirty-three years later

"So, it's you. Here you are."

Anachronistic

"Something that's old-fashioned and maybe a little out of place is anachronistic, like a clunky black rotary-dial telephone sitting on a desk beside a sleek new smart-phone (or whatever the new technology is when you read this)."

~~ from Vocabulary.com

Rabbit at McDonald's

"[Roy] likes to pour salt out of the shaker until he has a heap and then rub the French fries in it, one by one. The French fries and about a pound of salt are all the kid eats; Harry finishes his Big Mac for him, even though he doesn't much care for all the Technicolor glop McDonald's puts on everything—pure chemicals. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned plain hamburger? Gone wherever the Chiclet went."

~~ from Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

Barth is dead

Long live The Sot-Weed Factor.

Eviction Experts

I read and appreciated Mya Frazier's "The Eviction Experts" along with Lauren Oyler's "Dance Factory" from Harper's Magazine's April 2024 print issue.