Greeneland

"There is in most literary biography a simple detail that speaks volumes about its subject. Thoreau never left home. Henry Miller was henpecked, Borges lived in fear of his mother, James Joyce was afraid of thunderstorms, Freud was angst-ridden on railway platforms, Wittgenstein was addicted to cowboy movies, Wallace Stevens to candy, Nabokov never once visited Moscow, Jack Kerouac had stacks of the National Review by his bed when he died."

~~ from Paul Theroux's "Greeneland," an essay included in Figures in a Landscape about Graham Greene and the biography Life of Graham Greene by Norman Sherry

Auggie for Apple Books

L.U.S.K. only realized a few nights ago that Auggie's Revenge has been available for Apple Books since July 2025.

the smallest gewgaw

"Because it isn't enough just to show off one's goods!

"A mercurial subtlety is required to sell. One must choose one's words and ideas carefully, flatter adroitly, chatter about things one neither thinks nor believes in, wax enthusiastic over trifles, score a point with a deprecatory gesture, be acutely interested in things one doesn't give a damn about, be many sided, flexible, and amusing, accept the smallest gewgaw with grace, not lift and eyebrow or take it personally if some gross remark is made, and suffer, suffer patiently—the waste of time, the sour, ill-tempered faces, the rude, annoying, rebuffs—suffer in order to earn a few centavos, because 'that's life.'"

~~ from Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

"As New" Chump Change

Make an offer on the original English-language trade paperback of Dan Fante's debut novel. It's an extremely rare "as new" edition of Chump Change from Sun Dog Press.

the highest form of wealth

"The bills, with their colored pictures, seemed more significant, the nickel-based coins jingled merrily as we juggled them in our hands. It's a fact, the money we acquired through trickery seemed more subtle and rare, the highest form of wealth. It seemed to whisper in our ears words of smiling praise and mischievous provocation. It was not the vile, hateful money that must be earned by hard work, but rather easy money, a silver disc with two gnomes' legs and a dwarf's beard, a clowning, dancing money whose smell carried us, like a good wine, to orgiastic thoughts."

~~ from Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

a few articles

In 2025, I had a chance to read Anne Applebaum's "Russia and China Are Winning the Propaganda War" from The Atlantic, Samuel Moyn's "Casus Belli: The origins of the war in Ukraine" in Harper's, Jon Lee Anderson's recent New Yorker reporting from the Congo region of Africa, and other pieces primarily from Harper's Magazine and The Atlantic's 2024 and '25 print issues. Goodreads says I read twenty-one books. A strong majority were under 250 pages.