On New Year’s Day I visited the Strand Bookstore at the corner of 12th Street and Broadway in New York City. The Strand is my favorite place in the world; visiting it is a necessary experience for any book lover able to afford a trip to New York. I used to live within walking distanceContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently: Strand Edition”
Category Archives: Literature
Books Acquired Recently: MLA Edition
Today I made my long-anticipated visit to the MLA Convention book fair. I acquired five books and ordered several more that will be shipped to me, which I will write about once I receive them. All of the books interest me, but the fact that I got several of them at a discount made themContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently: MLA Edition”
MLA
I am currently at the MLA Convention in Boston. MLA is always a fun time; it’s a total geek-fest. While the various sessions are interesting, people watching is my favorite convention activity (aside from browsing at the book fair, of course). I love that eighty percent of the attendees–including myself–are dressed in black, I loveContinue reading “MLA”
Books Acquired Recently: Holiday Edition
My family exchanged gifts today rather than on the 25th. Here is a list of all of the books I was fortunate enough to receive: Bechdel, Alison. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For. Boston: Houghton, 2008. I read an article in the New Yorker about Bechdel earlier this year and decided that I wantedContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently: Holiday Edition”
Zadie Smith on Music and Obsession
Zadie Smith has an article in the 17 December 2012 issue of the New Yorker about her journey to appreciating Joni Mitchell’s work in which she also offers some thoughts on being a connoisseur of various art forms. Smith writes that she distrusts those who claim to be true connoisseurs of more than one form, noting that theContinue reading “Zadie Smith on Music and Obsession”
Books Acquired Recently: Queerness and Race
Reid-Pharr, Robert. Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual. New York: New York UP, 2007. Somerville, Siobhan B. Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2000. Stockton, Kathryn Bond. Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets “Queer.“ Durham: Duke UP, 2006. IContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently: Queerness and Race”
Paul Lukas’s Fascination With Interesting Things
I’ve written here before about Paul Lukas’s Uni Watch site, which is a daily stop in my internet wanderings. One of the reasons I love Uni Watch is that Lukas’s material aesthetic is very close to mine: he’s obsessed with fine craftsmanship, enjoys older objects, and has an eye for fine detail (and, like me,Continue reading “Paul Lukas’s Fascination With Interesting Things”
Books Acquired Recently
Kane, Daniel. All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. I am a major fan of the New York School of Poets (John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, et al.) and its descendants. Kane’s book covers both groups, so I bought it to readContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently”
Writing About Black Sexuality
A friend passed along this article by Stacey Patton from The Chronicle on Higher Education. It provides a helpful summary of the ever-growing history of the intersection between Black Studies and queer theory. This dialogue is a crucial one for my work on Samuel R. Delany, thus it is pleasing that others outside of theContinue reading “Writing About Black Sexuality”
Reality Imitating Art
I went to the dentist this morning. As I was lying prone in the chair in pain, I thought of Frank Norris’s novel McTeague, in which the title character is a dentist whose grip is so strong that he is able to extract teeth with his bare hands. Later in the visit, I received aContinue reading “Reality Imitating Art”
Daniel Shank Cruz 