biblioklept

Shadows of Liberty, 2016, by Titus Kaphar (b. 1976) William T. Vollmann has published a long essay, “American Ephemera,” in the latest issue of Harper’s. The essay is larded with citations, illustrations, and other “ephemera.” Here are the opening paragraphs of Vollmann’s preamble to the essay, “An Explanation”: What dimensions has our America? I propose to offer you this antique measuring…

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“Flag” by Noel Freibert. Published in Kramers Ergot #9, 2016, Fantagraphics Books.

RIP David Hockney, 1937-2026 David Hockney, a prolific giant of the last century, died yesterday at 88. I will leave others with greater expertise to unpack Hockney’s bearing on the (so-called) art world. I do know that people reacted with real emotion to his paintings and drawings. I saw that firsthand on the few occasions I was lucky enough to see a Hockney hanging in a gallery. Below is a slim…

The Knockout, c. 1921 by e.e. cummings (1894–1962)

Eye of the Heart: Short Stories from Latin America, ed. by Barbara Howes, 1973. Avon-Bard (1974). No cover artist or designer credited. 576 pages. A promising mixtape, via many translators. Clarice Lispector might not have been a big enough name for English-reading audiences in the 1970s to make the front or back cover, but editor Barbara Howes included two of her stories. Here is a piece (the…

From “The Kanibul Ball” by Lale Westvind. Published in Kramers Ergot #9, 2016, Fantagraphics Books.

I’m a big fan of Drew Lerman’s work, and I’m always excited when he puts together a new collection. His latest is Conversations with Don DeLillo and Other Conversations, collecting his recent strips. I would describe these strips as functioning in the mode of pseudoautiobiographical postmodern literary interrogation, only that makes them sound pretentious, which they aren’t. They are very funny…

RIP Marjane Satrapi, 19-2026 I was saddened to learn today of the death of the artist Marjane Satrapi. Satrapi was only 56. Satrapi is probably most recognized for her first published work, Persepolis, a graphic novel she completed in 2003. Persepolis was one of the first books I wrote about on Biblioklept, way back in 2007, when this blog was not half a year old. Here is the entire post: “It was…

Nine million, n-­i-­n-­e million. Ah, the world got what it deserved. The lessons had been written on the board in big letters thousands of years ago and repeated several times every century since. Question: How many men can I kill if I dig out the Suez Canal? Question: How many men can I kill if I build myself a Great Pyramid? Question: How many men, women and children can we kill if we retake…

I have always loved the month of May. Spring semester is usually over and done by the last week of April and I seem to breathe a little easier. I love May Day and there’s always been a neat little run of interesting dates in the first week, including my wedding anniversary. (My silly ass has taken to including Thomas Pynchon’s birthday as the capstone to the first week of Merry May). I get that…

From “Sexy Guns” by Helge Reumann. Published in Kramers Ergot #9, 2016, Fantagraphics Books.

NYRB will publish reprints of two John Berger books on June 16th of this year (why does that date seem so familiar?), his experimental picaresque 1972 classic G., and 1984’s And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photo. I’d never heard of the latter, which NYRB describes as maybe …the most original of John Berger’s books; certainly, it is among the most moving. A meditation on first and last things,…

Flower in a Stream, c. 1989 by David Cloud Berman (1967-2019). Originally published in Caliban #8, 1990.

“Box Head” by Jayr Pulga, published in RAW #5, 1983, Raw Books & Graphics.

Timoclea Kills the Captain of Alexander the Great, 1659 by Elisabetta Sirani (1638–1665)

This October, McSweeney’s will publish an anthology of Stephen Dixon’s short stories. Titled Goodbye to Goodbye (after Dixon’s 1985 short story), this anthology inaugurates a forthcoming wave of Dixonia over the next three years, including editions of I and End of I in paperback, a new edition of Frog next year and a reprint of Interstate the year after that, and, most exciting, a…