Mr. Ireland

Dec 18

Animated short inspired by a sentence from Michael Cunningham’s novel-in-progress, Olympia. Shorts inspired by Lydia Davis, Colson Whitehead, Marisa Silver, and more here.

Dec 12

Another Nabokov Quote

“I don’t wish to touch hearts…I don’t even want to affect minds very much. What I really want to produce is that little sob in the spine of the artist-reader.”

Video interview here.

Dec 11

“Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness, dear, my happiness will remain, in the moist reflection of a streetlamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal’s black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness.”

Vladimir Nabokov, “A Letter That Never Reached Russia.

(via itsjanna)

For Janna.

Nov 25

Amazing advertisement from the New Zealand Book Council. The story is Maurice Gee’s “Going West.”

(via Paper Cuts)

Nov 23

More cool book covers. Each cover is a specimen box filled with paper and insect pins. Nabokov, an avid lepidopterist, would have approved. More here.

Penguin editions of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. The black and white one with the car is one of six in the new Penguin Magnum Collection.

From Roberto Bolaño’s Last Interview

Interviewer: What kinds of feelings do posthumous works awaken in you?

R.B.: Posthumous: It sounds like the name of a Roman gladiator, an unconquered gladiator. At least that’s what poor Posthumous would like to believe. It gives him courage.

Nov 15

I’m pretty sure the building in the background is across the street from my office. If I’m right, it’s a sorority now.

itsjanna:

Fun fact about Eugene: Animal House was filmed at the University of Oregon. You hear “Louie Louie” a lot when you live in this town.

“I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.” Cormac McCarthy. Full interview here.