commonplace

This Sophie Wilder lady has some good taste in books. “Who do you like?” I asked....

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:09:29 -0500

This Sophie Wilder lady has some good taste in books.

“Who do you like?” I asked. “Nabokov” “Lolita?” … “Sure,” she said. “But I like Pale Fire better. And Ada. Some of the early Russian ones, too, like The Defense.”

—Christopher Beha, What Happened to Sophie Wilder?

"Man and boy,” said honest Jarl, “I have lived ever since I can remember.” And..."

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 18:23:51 -0500

““Man and boy,” said honest Jarl, “I have lived ever since I can remember.” And truly, who may call to mind when he was not? To ourselves, we all seem coeval with creation. Whence it comes, that it is so hard to die, ere the world itself is departed.”

- Herman Melville, Mardi

"[T]the Phoenicians, if hearsay is believed, were the first to dare to mark words in clumsy..."

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:36:08 -0600

“[T]the Phoenicians, if hearsay is believed,
were the first to dare to mark words in clumsy figures
to make the voice endure; Memphis had yet to learn
to bind her river’s reeds together, and only birds
and wild beasts inscribed on stones preserved
their magic utterances.”

- Lucan, Civil War, trans. Matthew Fox

Photo

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:50:57 -0600

nonmodernist: Presenting: The Parade’s End read-along! This...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:48:09 -0600

nonmodernist:

Presenting:

The Parade’s End read-along!

This will be a fandom-friendly* read-along of the Ford Madox Ford tetralogy, spanning several months, in anticipation of the (as-yet-undated) airing of Parade’s End, written by Tom Stoppard, directed by Susanna White, and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall.

When: The read-along will begin on February 1, 2012. Check the schedule guide here for a week-to-week breakdown of reading.

Why: Because of ~reasons~ obviously. For instance, we love early twentieth-century literature; we’re excited for the upcoming BBC/HBO television adaptation; we love Downton Abbey and want more things like it in our lives.

Where: All over the internet! This read-along will primarily be hosted through nonmodernist and on Twitter (using #ParadesEnd), but we love all the corners of the internet and we want them all to join us! Look for discussion posts on Dreamwidth and Livejournal, and links to content all over the place. Feel free to blog your responses at your own site or the service of your choice — as long as you send them to us, we’ll put the links in our round-ups.

How: Read the books! Post about them! Join our discussions and submit your posts to our linkspams! Livetweet your reading sessions! There’s no right or wrong way to participate.

Get started: First, spread the word! This only works if you all get involved (and corral your friends, enemies, neighbors, and family members to do the same). Follow nonmodernist for more updates as we approach the start date. Then acquire a copy of the book and get ready to start reading!

______

* “fandom-friendly”: we mean that this read-along will be a safe space for fandom-style participation. We recognize and defend your right to create fanworks of any and all kinds, flail over anything and everything, and use as much fandom slang as you desire. While some discussions may get a little academic, others will be shallow and all about the pretty.

"Not only wine but its oblivion I pour In my cup, and I will be happy, because happiness Is ignorant...."

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:06:05 -0600

“Not only wine but its oblivion I pour
In my cup, and I will be happy, because happiness
Is ignorant. Who, remembering
Or foreseeing, ever smiled?”

- Ricardo Reis (trans. Richard Zenith)

Lovely series (yes, want)

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:51:30 -0600

Lovely series (yes, want)

Wow, I sure never knew about this. My Archie is so much...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:30:36 -0600

Wow, I sure never knew about this. My Archie is so much less…sleazy than this.

ivebeenreadinglately:

weeklylizard:

William Shatner as Archie Goodwin and Kurt Kasznar as Nero Wolfe in the aborted 1959 CBS-TV series.

Shatner would have been a good Archie, I think; just the right amount of transparent, nigh-joking self-regard. Latter-day Shatner, at least; could early Shatner have charmed us enough?

vintageanchor: If you’re a fan of PBS’s “Downton Abbey,” check...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:53:41 -0600

vintageanchor:

If you’re a fan of PBS’s “Downton Abbey,” check out Vintage’s re-issue of Ford Madox Ford’s PARADE END, which covers the same ground of Edwardian England, WWI, and the English ruling class as it descends into the chaos of war…

Ford Madox Ford’s masterpiece, a tetralogy set in England during World War I, is widely considered one of the best novels of the twentieth century.

First published as four separate novels (Some Do Not . . ., No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up—, and The Last Post) between 1924 and 1928, Parade’s End explores the world of the English ruling class as it descends into the chaos of war. Christopher Tietjens is an officer from a wealthy family who finds himself torn between his unfaithful socialite wife, Sylvia, and his suffragette mistress, Valentine. A profound portrait of one man’s internal struggles during a time of brutal world conflict, Parade’s End bears out Graham Greene’s prediction that “There is no novelist of this century more likely to live than Ford Madox Ford.”

"White foods taste best to me and I prefer to eat alone."

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:12:53 -0600

“

White foods taste best to me

and I prefer to eat alone.

”

- Anne Carson, “The Glass Essay”

"Marvelling that any came alive Out of the shambles that men built And smashed, to cleanse the world..."

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:24:24 -0600

“Marvelling that any came alive
Out of the shambles that men built
And smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt.”

- Siegfried Sassoon, “Song-Books of the War”

"…Next: a chorus. A stadium radiant with kliegs. Two more figures in the same field, like..."

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:05:25 -0600

“

…Next: a chorus. A stadium
radiant with kliegs. Two more figures
in the same field, like plastic cake toppers.
Eyes closed, ears stopped to all but their
voices. They lay out my choices. One’s called
Call. One’s called Response.

When I say Marriage
you say Run!
Marriage! Run!
Marriage! Run!

”

- Kathleen Rooney, prologue to Oneiromance (an epithalamion)

"I’m finishing up a collection of short stories. They are all linked by the fact that I wrote them...."

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:35:50 -0600

“I’m finishing up a collection of short stories. They are all linked by the fact that I wrote them. That’s the gimmick, the hook.”

- Sam Lipsyte : The New Yorker (via peterwknox)

Best possible gimmick.

(via mcnallyjackson)

“Human figure” (kneeling variant)

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:04:05 -0600

“Human figure” (kneeling variant)

Samurai helmet

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:53:59 -0600

Samurai helmet

(A rather festive) prawn.

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:49:51 -0600

(A rather festive) prawn.

"Every really German writer must analyze not so much his characters as himself, before the public...."

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:29:38 -0600

“Every really German writer must analyze not so much his characters as himself, before the public. The Russian writers are great analyzers, but of their characters, not of themselves; and a certain shame which is, perhaps, a false shame, keeps English writers of any national tradition at all from putting the inner side of their personalities before the public. In America the practice of public self-analysis, particularly in novels, has of late years become relatively common. But that mostly with the Middle Western school of novelists who are more strongly under Teutonic and Nordic influence than those of other regions of the United States.”

- Ford Madox Ford, The March of Literature

Little, Brown and Company Spring/Summer '12: THIS BRIGHT RIVER

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:53:15 -0600

Little, Brown and Company Spring/Summer '12: THIS BRIGHT RIVER:

Awesome! Except for the part where June 2010 is still 8 months away…

littlebrowncatalog:

JUNE 2012 HARDCOVER

This Bright River: A Novel
Patrick Somerville
978-0-316-12931-2, $24.99

Lauren Sheehan’s career in medicine came to a halt after a sequence of violent events abroad. Now she’s back in the safest place she knows—St. Helens, Wisconsin—cut off from career, friendship, and…

"The web of the hypocrisy of to-day hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time..."

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:52:40 -0500

“The web of the hypocrisy of to-day hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of halfness, catches only miserable, stupid flies.”

- Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own

Photo

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:11:05 -0500