Ideas of Heaven

 

“Many years before, it is true, on a visit to the poet laureate, Alfred Austin, as they sat with others on the lawn in the afternoon, it was suggested that each person should tell his idea of heaven: ‘Austin’s idea was to sit … in a garden, and while he sat to receive constant telegrams announcing alternately a British victory by sea and a British victory by land’; ‘mine’, said Blunt, ‘was to be laid out to sleep in a garden, with running water near, and so to sleep for a hundred thousand years, then to be woke by a bird singing, and to call out to the person one loved best, “Are you there?” and for her to answer, “Yes, are you?” and so turn round and go to sleep again for another hundred thousand years’.” — Edith Finch, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 1938

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The Self

 

Football

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Medical History - Nicole Sealey

 

Number Of Books Banned By Schools In Each US State

The map above comes from from PEN America, which tracks book bans and fights censorship in public schools and libraries across the country.

Brilliant Maps

Still Here

 

How Our Love Ends

 

Descriptions Of Things And Atmosphere - F. Scott Fitzgerald

These descriptions taken from the notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald are a testament to his enormous talent:
• “The island floated, a boat becalmed, upon the almost perceptible curve of the world.”
• “The first lights of the evening were springing into pale existence. The Ferris wheel, pricked out now in lights, revolved leisurely through the dusk; a few empty cars of the roller coaster rattled overhead.”
• “Farther out in the water there were other lights where a fleet of slender yachts rode the tide with slow dignity, and farther still a full ripe moon made the water bosom into a polished dancing floor.”
• “It was a cup of a lake with lily pads for dregs and a smooth surface of green cream.”
• “A region of those monotonous apartment rows that embody the true depths of the city — darkly mysterious at night, drab in the afternoon.”
• “Spring came sliding up the mountain in wedges and spear points of green.”

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Hollywood’s Eve

Eve Babitz came of age in Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s. She knew all the fun people and best places to go and partied like there was no tomorrow. She was a groupie and there was lots and lots of sex, drugs and rock and roll. As she approached her thirties she began to write autobiographical novels and short stories that were presented as fiction and didn’t receive much recognition. 

Lily Anolik, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, was intrigued by Eve’s story and tracked her down in 2012. By this time Eve was in her 70s and had suffered horrific burns when she dropped a lit cigar and her clothing caught on fire. She was living a reclusive life.

Anolik recently wrote a book about Eve’s relationship with Joan Didion that I wanted to read and someone suggested that I should read Hollywood’s Eve first. So I did and didn’t like it. Eve, as presented, was a narcissist who seems to have had a joyless life despite all the supposedly fun things she got up to. I didn’t get much of a sense of who she was and I lay that at Anolik’s feet. I think I’ll wait for a bit before I read Didion and Babitz.

Tell Me Everything | The Narrative Within

We all have stories to tell. It’s just that some of us are better than others at telling them.
Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge have something in common. They both like to collect stories from “unrecorded lives”. Lucy and Olive know that we’re all surrounded by stories just waiting to be told and they’re anxious to tell them.

Read More: Art For Housewives

The Frog In Prague - Stephen Dixon

They stand still. “And Kafka?” Howard says.

“Kafka is not buried here.”

“No? Because I thought—what I mean is the lady at my hotel’s tourist information desk—the Intercontinental over there—and also the one who sold me the ticket now, both told me—”

The man’s shaking his head, looks at him straight-faced. It’s up to you, his look says, if you’re going to give me anything for this tour. I won’t ask. I won’t embarrass you if you don’t give me a crown. But I’m not going to stand here all day waiting for it.

“Here, I want to give you something for all this.” He looks in his wallet. Smallest is a fifty note. Even if he got three-to-one on the black market, it’s still too much. He feels the change in his pocket. Only small coins. This guy’s done this routine with plenty of people, that’s for sure, and he’d really like not to give him anything.

“Come, come,” the man said.

“You understand?” Howard said. “For Kafka’s grave. Just as I told the lady at the ticket window, I’m sure the other parts of this ticket for the Old Synagogue and the Jewish Museum are all very interesting—maybe I’ll take advantage of it some other time—but what I really came to see—”

“Yes, come, come. I work here too. I will show you.”

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White Eyes

White-Eyes

By Mary Oliver

In winter

    all the singing is in

         the tops of the trees

             where the wind-bird

with its white eyes

    shoves and pushes

         among the branches.

             Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,

    but he's restless—

         he has an idea,

             and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings

    as long as he stays awake.

         But his big, round music, after all,

             is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.

    In the pine-crown

         he makes his nest,

             he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,

    I only imagine his glittering beak

         tucked in a white wing

             while the clouds—

which he has summoned

    from the north—

         which he has taught

             to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall

    into the world below

         like stars, or the feathers

               of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,

    that is asleep now, and silent—

         that has turned itself

             into snow. 

Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It’s the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming,

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

The Search

Excerpts from The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, published in 1961. Read by Levi Shiach. This debut novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962. It follows a young man named Jack ‘Binx’ Bolling who, in the wake of the Korean War, wanders the streets of New Orleans, trying to derive meaning from the world around him.

 

via Aeon

Christmas Presents - Donald Barthelme

In the middle of a forest. Parked there is a handsome 1932 Ford, its left rear door open. Two young women are pausing, about to step into the car. Each has one foot on the running board. Both are naked. They have their arms around each other’s waist in sisterly embrace. The woman on the left is dark, the one on the right fair. Their white, graceful backs are in sharp contrast to the shiny black of the Ford. The woman on the right has turned her head to hear something her companion is saying.

At a dinner party. The eight guests are seated, in shining white plastic shells mounted on steel pedestals, in a luxurious kitchen. They sit around a long table of polished rosewood, at one end of which there is a wicker basket filled with fruit, pineapples, bananas, pears, and at the other a wicker basket containing loaves of burnt-orange bread. The kitchen floor is polished black tile; electric ovens with bronze fronts are set into the polished off-white walls. On thick glass shelves above the diners, handsome pots with herbs, jams, jellies, and tall glass jars with half-a-dozen varieties of raw pasta. Six of the guests, men and women, are conventionally clothed. The two young women (one dark, one fair) are naked, smoking cigarillos. One of them unfolds a large white linen napkin and smoothes it over her companion’s lap.

Ten o’clock in the morning. Marble, more marble, together with walnut paneling, a terrazzo floor, on the left a long (sixty feet) black-topped counter behind which the tellers sit, on the right a beige-carpeted area with three rows (three times three) of bank officers, suited and gowned. At the back, the great vault door open, functionary seated at desk reading a Gothic novel. In the center, long lines of depositors channeled to the tellers by a flattened S-curve of blue velvet ropes. Uniformed guards, etc., the American flag drooping on its standard near the vault. Two young women enter. They are naked except for black masks. One is dark, one fair. They place themselves back-to-back in the center of the banking floor. The guards rush toward them, then rush away again.

A woman seated on a plain wooden chair under a canopy. She is wearing white overalls and has a pleased expression on her face. Watching her, two dogs, German shepherds, at rest. Behind the dogs, with their backs to us, a row of naked women kneeling, sitting on their heels, their buttocks perfect as eggs or O’s — OOOOOOOOOOOOO. In profile to the scene, at the far right, Henry James — his calm, accepting gaze.

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