160. Found notes on } David Lynch’s “Boat.”

--> “At the start of the film boat, a voiceover appeared. That is a girl’s voice….” “When this voice talking… trying to cope with the flashbacks that she’s receiving.” “She woke up in a forest, the light was so bright that she couldn’t….” “…[W]e can see forest… we can see water….” “…[V]oiceovers they seem more knowledgeable about what’s going on in their lives during the moment and what point changed it forever. The women in Boats seems not to know anything about what happened to her prior and what is happening during the moment.” “She is tired and wants to sleep…. She begins to describe what are on the boat just like the string with strange shape.” “The film starts with a tree in a forest, the light is so bright that we can’t see anything clearly. …[T]here is too bright… the bright light changes into dark night….” “Then everything became dark, the girl’s voice appeared again, ‘boat still moving fast, I feel tired…’.” “The camera turned to the man and he said ‘It worked.’” “…[T]he story stopped with the picture of the moon. ... We want to see beautiful things….”

159. from the Paris binder } Dec. '98.

[ 1. Paris binder front cover ]

[ 2. Paris binder At the Musee d'Orsay poem ]

[ 3. Paris binder cross-outs ]

[ 4. Paris binder opium perfume ]

158. Ghosts & } trifles.

“Worse than myself” is a phrase taken from “The Uncommon Prayer-Book,” a story by M. R. James. At The Smart Set, I wrote about Oxford World’s Classics’ latest reprint of James’ Collected Ghost Stories. Also discussed: The Ring, Kate Bush, H. P. Lovecraft, and It Follows. At least have a look at Shannon Sands’ charming illustrations. (See her illustration for “Casting the Runes” above.)

For SHARKPACK, a response to the poem “Traveler’s Monologue” by Cassie Pruyn—“a horse with a second mouth. Mouth and mouth inside its mouth. Duplicitous.”

Rose Metal Press authors were invited to contribute to the Song of the Week series at Coldfront. I wrote about “Nunu” by Mira Calix. Poets off poetry, it says—not so!

157. Skin Tips } nos. 3, 4, 5 & 6.

[ Skin Tips no. 3 ]

[ Skin Tips no. 4 ]

[ Skin Tips no. 5 ]

[ Skin Tips no. 6 ]

156. Mookie & Pookie & } the White Hands.

Yesterday I received an email from Erin Laine. The full text of it—“Now you’re in a wilderness, Pookie.” I replied—wrote, simply, “Erin?” As you know my last contact with her was in 2014, at a coffee shop where I prepared notes for a lecture on Mark Samuels’ short story “Colony.” What she said to me then was cryptic. I sensed she was distressed, and I subsequently made fruitless efforts to contact her. Inexplicably, my reply was sent to my phone as a text, though garbled; it read: “Exin?”

Pookie, by the way, is not a nickname anyone called me except Erin. When she first called me Pookie, while we waited to get into our MIT weekend courses (mine was “Homer’s Odyssey”; hers was a computer programming course), I thought she was teasing me—you know, Sally calling Linus her “Sweet Babboo.” When I said so she said, “No, dummy” and explained to me about a television show she saw called “Mookie and Pookie.” Go ahead and Google. If I’m Pookie I’m Justine Bateman.

None of this adds up to anything but it did remind me that I published excerpts from the lecture notes I wrote about the Mark Samuels collection The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (Tartarus Press, 2012). The notes appear in Supernatural Tales 34. What follows is from the first lecture and does not appear in ST:

Students, As I prepare these lecture notes, and in addition to the Samuels, we find upon my desk a thermos of coffee laced with rum, this notebook, and a blue, paper packet that contains a single human tooth. [...] Alfred Muswell calls for a literature opposed to realism. His model is the stories of Lilith Blake. We’re told Blake is best known for her collection The Reunion and Others, but best known to us is The White Hands and Other Tales. [...] We may as well note here that the title The White Hands and Other Tales is very similar to the title of the Samuels book we hold in our own hands, The White Hands and Other Weird Tales. Similar, but not the same. Will the Samuels effect us as the Blake did Muswell?

Now I'm in a wilderness. If anyone hears from Erin, please let me know.

155. Author of } museums.

Yesterday, in the Chicago Tribune: “American Writers Museum sneak peek: far-reaching, dramatic”; and in The New York Times: “An Everyman Museum to Celebrate American Writers”—the museum is the American Writers Museum. It opens next week. More from the Times: 

…Mr. [Malcolm] O’Hagan incorporated a nonprofit dedicated to the project. He soon hired Mr. Anway, founder of the Boston-based firm Amaze Design, who organized brainstorming sessions with writers, publishers, scholars, teachers and booksellers in various cities.

I’m one of the “writers, publishers, scholars” hired by Mr. Anway. I wrote thirty-four author stories, twenty-five for the “85-foot long interactive wall [that] highlights 100 notable writers…” and nine for the Chicago authors room. The Times quoted from one of my texts, about Vladimir Nabokov: 

Those who skip Ms. [Maureen] Corrigan’s video commentary on literary experimentalism, for example, may not realize that “Lolita” is more than a novel that “hinges on a road trip — a classic American genre — and riffs on motel and teen culture,” as the brief wall text dedicated to Vladimir Nabokov puts it.

Note the use of dashes—a mark of my prose, for sure.

It was a challenge to write lives of famous authors in 100 – 190 words. What do you choose to say about Melville? About Hemingway? About Cather? I was meanly grateful Flannery O’Conner died when she was 39. Some of my favorites to write were the (slightly) lesser-knowns. Here's my bio for Margaret Wise Brown:

Is “In the great green room,” as famous a first line as “Call me Ishmael”? Quite possibly. Margaret Wise Brown wrote dozens of children's books, including The Runaway Bunny (1942) and Goodnight Moon (1946). Brown’s stories are about the everyday life of children (often represented by animals), written in a subtle—but instantly recognizable—verse that lends itself to being read aloud. Brown’s whimsy extended to the home she refurbished for herself on an island off the coast of Maine; she called it “The Only House,” though it was not.

“Though it was not.” Though it was not! Put that on my placard when you add me to your museum.

[The Times piece included photographs of the museum taken by Whitten Sabbatini; pictured above is the “85-foot long interactive wall” where much of my work appears.]