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”
Tag Archives: literature
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”
Books Acquired Recently
Baker, Houston A., Jr. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984. This is a classic in the field of African American literary studies which keeps popping up in my reading, so I figured it was time to finally break down and read it. Bought from Better World BooksContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently”
The New Site Photograph
I just updated the main photograph for the site (what Facebook would call the “cover photo”). It is a picture of one of my favorite shelves in the poetry section of my library. The photograph includes some of my favorite poets and one of my favorite books of poetry, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence andContinue reading “The New Site Photograph”
Brief Thoughts on Fiction in America
I mentioned in a post on 15 November that I’m currently serving on the search committee for a job opening in my department. The position is for a fiction writer, so I’ve been reading lots of short stories which serve as the candidates’ writing samples. Much of the fiction is quite good, which is comforting because it shows thatContinue reading “Brief Thoughts on Fiction in America”
Daniel Shank Cruz 