RIP, David Bowie. Whatever one thinks of his music (I was a fan but not a fanatic), he set an amazing example of tireless creativity and productivity until the very end. See also: A 20-year-old David Bowie responds to his first fan letter.
WORK
“Here’s what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” said May Kasahara. “Everybody’s born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I’d really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can’t seem to do it. They just don’t get it. Of course, the problem could be that I’m not explaining it very well, but I think it’s because they’re not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they’re not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things.”
—Haruki Murakami
—from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
WORD(S)
adversaria /ad-vər-SAIR-ee-ə/. noun. Commentaries or notes on a text or document. A miscellaneous collection of notes and quotes. AKA: a commonplace book. Borrowed from Latin adversāria (notes, observations, things written on one side of a page).
“Collect all your Adversaria and give them to the World in some shape or other.” (Thomas Percy)
“A correspondent, who in a number of Adversaria ingeniously traced ‘bombast’ to the inflated Doctor Paracelsus Bombast, considers that ‘humbug’ may, in like manner, be derived from Homberg, the distinguished chemist of the court of the Duke of Orleans…” (John Camden Hotten)
“It is compiled out of an Adversaria, or commonplace book, in which he had jotted down everything of unusual interest that he heard in conversation or read in books…” (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
WEB
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Before Facebook there were risqué Victorian calling cards.
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Electric Literature reprints David Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books. Also, via Reader K., Bowie demonstrates his “cut-up” technique for writing lyrics.
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Some roundups of 2015’s best book covers from The New York Times Book Review, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Book Page and The Casual Optimist.
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A Harvard Poetry Professor Reviewed Haiku I Got Sent on Tinder. H/T Reader C.
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Today in 1949, writer and translator Haruki Murakami is born in Kyoto, Japan (incidentally, he is not—nor is he related to—fellow surrealish novelist Ryū Murakami; save yourself some confusing grief there). At once mournful, surreal and deeply informed by the classical Western canon, Murakami has to be reckoned as one of the greatest contemporary authors in any language. His work is experimental but not at the expense of its (sometimes dark) heart. I recommend starting with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Linkage: Paris Review “Art of Fiction” interview; The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami; Haruki Murakami’s Advertorial Short Stories: Rare Short-Short Fiction from the 1980s; ► Haruki MURAKAMI: In SEARCH of this elusive WRITER (DOCUMENTARY); A pie chart of Murkami’s themes (obsessions).
WATCH/WITNESS
► David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” performed by The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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Reader D. on the pulp librarian book cover series: “I showed my husband (a public librarian) the book cover series on Professional Literature for Librarians, and he thought they were hilarious (and quite pertinent to his experience). The only problem I find with them is that they are notably sexist, which I hope is due only to the source material and not due to outmoded notions about the gender of librarians. (In other words, I would have liked to have seen more covers that represented ”hot“ male librarians (after all, there are a few–I married one).”
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Reader B. isn’t buying the used bookstore comeback: "That WaPo story about used bookshops is too much puffery. ¶ In mentioning the (relatively) high profit margin for individual book sales, the piece ignores that volume is usually low, which is one reason 99% of used bookshops have barely survived, before Amazon. ¶ Note, too, buried down in the piece how some (no mention of #s?) stores use Amazon to boost sales. ¶ Moreover, that detail about opening shops in the right neighborhoods…such locations are very, very rare. Rarer still as American society increasingly sorts itself out by economic class.
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A different Reader B. answers a question: "I am reading the 2015–08–07 issue […] ‘Charming Bookstores in Unexpected Places → What are some of your favorites?’ Okay, I will answer that. In the May 2014 issue of Snakeskin, I wrote about the charms of used bookstores.
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