[we're starting two ideas today, which seemed to require me leaving the brackets for a bit]
Hello you wondrous and wonderful people who yet elect to receive these in their mail!
firstly, it feels finally the winter when I'll produce and send you all some wondersys books. It's been five and a quarter years since the
first poem and by now three-hundred-sixty-one other letters
have joined it. a three-hundred-sixty-two-plus page collection seems absurd, prideful, too formless to recall, too heavy to carry, and a barrier to future additions, so I'll be breaking it up into three or four smaller books. I'd be honored to give each of you some printed matter in the mail before the year ends! but to aid my collation, might I ask you to reply to this and tell me a favorite of yours
from the archive?
secondly, I'll be starting to send 5-15m recordings of me reading things aloud that I've enjoyed recently, novels or news or nonsense. today we have the first few pages of the arguably-first chapter (it's that kind of book) of
If on a winter's night a traveler, titled
If on a winter's night a traveler (I told you it was that kind of book). I've never really recovered from the way Calvino effortlessly and thoroughly dismantles "
show, don't tell" in this.
listen here.
(and ugh yes I mispronounced guillotine - I skipped over some words in that sentence and was deciding whether to start it again even while saying gill-o-teen)
love,
Ned