On Roberto Arlt

"[B]ut the fact that [Roberto] Arlt wrote 'badly' is what made him important. Because Arlt’s style was no style at all—an abrasively 'bad' Spanish which Arlt blamed on the conditions in which he lived and wrote, the bedlam of the streets—his writing never became aesthetic, could never be placed in a museum."

~~ from "On Roberto Arlt's The Seven Madmen" by Aaron Bady

a happier life

"I didn't want Rocco to finish his life on the back seat of my car surrounded by hack fiction, cigarette butts and empty potato chip bags. I wanted him to die at Jonathan Dante's home in Malibu. He'd lived his life near the smell of his master and the things that were familiar—on the carpet in the old man's den where he would snooze while my father banged away on his typewriter hour after hour, where the sweetness of the ocean's sound and the taste of the salted air would remind him of a happier life."

~~ from Chump Change by Dan Fante

used books

 

Picasso update

On February 15, 2025, I learned from a Swiss German Joycean that Luzern's lost Picasso House's collection was returned in 2008 to the Rosengart Collection. I am in the process of learning where they may be on display.

tiny books

Corona\Samizdat publishes its first microline books.

Tom Robbins

As a cowgirl once said, an author should never be just another roadside attraction. May Tom Robbins rest in peace.

Lenin

"Yes . . . but Lenin knew where he was going."

~~ from The Seven Madmen and The Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt

where i'm calling from