Below, Paul Bowles writes to James Purdy about his summer in Tangier, which was spent “with the Beat nucleus throbbing in our midst.” TO JAMES PURDY October 3, 1961, Tangier Thanks so much for sending a letter in exchange for a … Continued
Below, Kenneth Patchen offers aspiring editor/publisher Jasper Wood advice on how to run a literary journal. October 2, 1944, NYC Dear Jasper Wood: What a wonderful letter! How is this for your magazine’s name: OTSOTA (ON THE SIDE OF THE … Continued
In this trailer, we go down to Maryland to spy on Elle Muliarchyk as she shoots portraits of Stephen Dixon for our October issue. Filmed at Mr. Dixon’s Baltimore residence. About the subjects: Stephen Dixon is a two-time finalist for the … Continued
1) Poetry, my brother tells me, is too human for him. When he reads poetry he always feels like he’s missing something. Communication is very difficult for me, he tells me. 2) We are talking tonight about the lives … Continued
Below, Vladimir Nabokov writes to Jason Epstein with his notes on the proposed cover for his novel, Pnin. At the time, Epstein had just founded Anchor, as an imprint of Doubleday. Ultimately, Doubleday would not publish Lolita, as one of … Continued
1. I spend a fair amount of my time enjoying the feeling of stretching, stretching as a cat does, when I wake up in the morning on the mornings when I’m … Continued
The sign at the BF Goodrich on the corner of Turk and Larkin in Downtown San Francisco said it all. “The four saddest words in the English language,” the marquee read, “are Gore Vidal Is Dead.” I have to admit—the … Continued
Gustave Flaubert’s charged, tempestuous affair with poet Louise Colet has been portrayed as Flaubert’s one serious love affair. “It was to [Colet] that Flaubert addressed the now celebrated letters on his art that make the genesis of Madame Bovary one of the best-charted … Continued
In our third and final installment of Aidan Koch’s series on alternative eReaders, we have perhaps the most inconvenient of all. This non-existent technological wonder is based on the noble tradition of ticker tape, the earliest digital communications medium. Old-school ticker tape tracked rising and … Continued
The British gambling company Ladbrokes recently released odds that predict a Nobel Prize for Japanese novelist and Occidental love-affair, Haruki Murakami. Just below Murakami is Chinese literary barnstormer Mo Yan. This contest—where the Western world annually holds court over … Continued
