The following story by Daniil Kharms is from The Man with the Black Coat: Russia’s Literature of the Absurd, George Gibian (Trans), Northwestern University Press, Evanston IL, 1997, pp. 104–105. I’ve been reading a new translation of Kharms’ work available here.
One of the very nice perks of working right up the stairs from Open Letter Books—I have just got my hands on a dog-eared advance reader’s copy of 2666.
With the new academic year about to crash, this seems more than usually relevant.
For some reason my most vivid memories concern examinations. Big amphitheater in Goldwin Smith. Exam from 8am to 10:30. About 150 students—unwashed, unshaven young males and reasonably well-groomed [...]
In The Rest is Noise, Ross mentions (p. 182) the following “placard-like notice” appearing in the preface to the Ragtime movement of Paul Hindemith’s Suite ‘1922’:
Mode d’emploi – Direction for Use!!
Pay no attention to what you have learned in your piano lessons.
Do not consider for long whether you should play D# with the [...]
Roberto Bolaño would have had a lot of fun with this—
Scott Alan Carson, “The Stature and Body Mass of Mexicans in the Nineteenth-Century United States”, in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 39, No. 2, Autumn 2008, pp. 211-232.
Abstract
Data taken from nineteenth-century American prison records reveal that the statures of Mexicans born in Mexico declined, whereas [...]
Over at Three Percent, Chad has been pushing Paul Verhaeghen for some time now. I had initially been very excited about reading Omega Minor, which sounded like a Pynchon-esque historical caterwaul, not least because Verhaeghen is by day a professor of psychology working on cognitive aging. In what free time did he manage [...]
Almost exactly a year ago, I noted the release of Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines. Now, in a stroke of genius, NYRB Classics is broadcasting the entire book through Twitter. (Insert commentary on the ever-shifting world of media here).
In the latest issue of the British Academy Review, there is an excerpt from Robin Dunbar’s 2007 Joint British Academy/British Psychological Society Lecture, appearing under the title “Why Humans aren’t just Great Apes” [PDF]. The article begins with Dunbar recapitulating his famous argument for his eponymous number, complete with the following, lovely, table.
The number ~150 [...]
(By Erik Satie, via UbuWeb)
An artist must regulate his life.
Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of [...]
Ian Jack, the editor of Granta and chairman of the judges, admitted: “His agent wrote to me saying he was a cross between Milan Kundera and Woody Allen, which made me not want to read him.”
Fiachra Gibbons, “Obscure unpublished novelist joins the elite”, in The Guardian, Monday 6 January 2003.
(Thirwell’s latest book looks very interesting).
[...]I wonder to what extent the history of western musics is an outline of people’s deteriorating ability to listen.
Jeph Jerman, Sound Diary, 8 January 2000.
There is an excellent article in the latest Harper’s by Alec Wilkinson, a veteran staff writer at The New Yorker, describing the work of a husband and wife team who spend nearly two hundred days a year travelling America with a boat to search for the drowned. This is Wilkinson’s first piece published with [...]
Chad and EJ over at Three Percent have been hyping the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño to the point where I have been unable to resist going off to read something about his work. Most interesting to this unreconstructed lover of massive novels is news that his giant, posthumously published novel 2666 is about to [...]
The long bare corridor was brightly lighted and empty, until a young man with a thin face, a slightly crooked nose, and a weary expression which embraced his whole appearance, passed them. —There, there’s the guy who was working on this, he’s one of the writers. Hey, Willie… But the weary figure went on. He [...]
Children are rarely still, while elderly philosophers will sometimes remain rigid for minutes together.
Sir Francis Galton, Memories of My Life, Methuen, London, 1908, p. 278.
An electrical engineer is not a voltmeter’s way of making another voltmeter.
Sterelny, Kim. 1994. “Science and Selection”, in Biology and Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 1, January 1994, pp. 45–62.
Baden-Baden, 25 March 1964
A psychotherapist wished to give a talk on Schubert from the point of view of his own discipline. It was to take place in a very large hotel. The speaker’s rostrum had a curtain in front of it and resembled a puppet theatre. Suddenly, the large hall seemed to be like the [...]
Their breath came short and their pulses raced, but they were within those limits that had been predicted and considered safe.
Richard D. Lyons, “Apollo Doctors Pleased At Astronauts’ Reactions”, in New York Times, 21 July 1969, p. 5.
According to the publisher, Beckett is in good health and went swimming over the weekend.
“Beckett Accepts Nobel; Refuses [...]
From Mark Wilson, “Theory Façades”, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 104, No. 1, December 2004, pp. 273–288.
From Alan Baker, “Complexity Unfavoured”, in Analysis, Vol. 68, No. 297, January 2008, pp. 85–88.
Martin Russocki, “Untitled Subway Portrait”, from The Threepenny Review, Issue 85, Spring 2001.
Reprinted in Harper’s, Vol. 304, No. 1820, January 2002, p. 28.
[...]In this respect, an opera is like a living thing—like a porcupine, say.
Joseph Raz, The Practice of Value, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, p. 78.