The Emptiness

"Against the day" : Tunguska! Tesla! Evil!

There's a new Pynchon-novel coming out, maybe, in November, maybe. That's very good news.
You know, maybe.

A moment of shameless advertising

Be advised that The Book Depository has free shipping right now. Just in case you, like me, tend to... acquire books like a squirrel gathering nuts to last for the next ice age. Or something.

Anyway, they're quite cheap and well stocked.

Ligeti, dead

Gyorgy Ligeti is dead. Good excuse to make this "Cluster Sound Day".

Christopher Patton in 2007

There's an event of note coming up in 2007. Christopher Patton is publishing a collection of poems, entitled "Stone Gate". It will be a must-read.
The collection represents six years work and dozens of drafts and re-drafts, and it shows. The four parts — Broken Ground / Stone gate, / Glance Oblique / Weed Flower Mind — are supremely well crafted, form-conscius long poems, controlled and true, putting roots down in zen and Plinius. They sink right in.

Some of the poems and parts have been published in various magazines, primarily in theThe Paris Review, and are of course well worth seeking out if 2007 seems a bit far away.

From Weed Flower Mind:

A nature no one could tell you how to tend. Brown stalk and cracked pod. Spilt milk, blown seed. A waste of pain. A leaf-tooth gnawing the edge of noon. —In the yellow swaying heart-waste of August, an unearthed shout; buttercup at ankles, towers of white sweet clover, scent of yarrow from over-hacked, eroded bluffs; nameless, homeless, weed-mind

(Previously published in Ducky Magazine.)

I'm sure that I'll get back to "Stonen Gate" when the publication date approaches. In the meantime, seek out what's available on the net, and in the anthology "The new canon".
Enjoy.

Danny's new book

Danny Gregory did the extraordinary kindness of sending me his new book, "The Creative License".
.
It's a beautiful piece of work, dense pages that pull you in with drawings and slabs of wise words. What a nice thing to do!

Kubrick's still image work.

There's a new collection of Stanley Kubrik's still image work out, "Stanley Kubrik, Drama and Shadows" by Rainer Crone. It looks fabulous.
(See review in The Guardian.)

Steve Reich

There's a short but fairly interesting piece on the composer Steve Reich in The Guardian.

Absinthe

Since I have few original things to say right now I'm going to offer a link to an article about the science of absinthe instead.

If you need some you should probably go to Absinthe Online.

Rausing buys Granta

Oh, please, don't let this be bad news. Sigrid Rausing, incredibily wealthy representative of the carton-empire, has bought Granta.
She is quoted in The Guardian:

"I intend to ensure both have the human and financial resources to flourish."

That sounds hopeful. Or omnious.

Tip: literary magazines are poor material for milk cartons.

Iain Sinclair in the TLS

The Times Literary Supplement has a review of Iain Sinclairs Edge of the Orizon.

[Update: There is also a review in The Guardian, of course.]

By the way, it looks like the TLS might be at risk. Who ever expected huge profits from a literary magazine? That's where capitalism really breaks down. (The article might require a free registration.)