I was grateful for the opportunity to review two Lydia Davis collections, «Essays One» and «Essays Two».
My review also discusses Davis' translations of «Madame Bovary», «Swann's Way» and «Brisées» by Michel Leiris.
raintaxi.com/florilegium-...
Thanks for you help with this thread!
As you can imagine, my great-grandmother Ida Cullen-Copper devoted DECADES of time and energy to preserving Countée's legacy.
They met in 1930, and she died in 1986.
So, I know EXACTLY what it looks like when archival materials aren't properly curated:-(
"Frenzy" is my favorite Hitchcock movie.
The Performing Arts - Music Theater
2 March 2026
Couple weeks ago, I found this for $0.50 at a Friends of the Library sale.
I can't listen to this kind of music while I write.
But I can certainly queue it up while I'm making a mess in the kitchen👌
Tony Brown on HBCUs
Safe to say there wouldn't even have BEEN a Harlem Renaissance were it not for Howard University.
And Atlanta University.
And Fisk.
And . . . .
«Soliloquies: The Family Album»
2 March 2026
In honor of Women's History Month:
Ida Cullen-Cooper (1903-1986), widow of Harlem Renaissance poet Countée Cullen, keeper of the flame.
«Soliloquies: The War Diaries»
1 March 2026
San Diego, California
Navy Hymn:
Carla Kaplan was key to my research for «Countée Cullen's Harlem Renaissance: A Personal History» (2024).
Am now using for French writers the same hack I stumbled upon for dialogues between Cullen and dozens of other characters in that book, including ZNH:
I quote from their diaries and letters.
1 March 2026
Eartha Kitt recites Langston Hughes
Author=Nicolás Guillén
Spoken Word Recording=Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words from The Harlem Renaissance
Narrator=Eartha Kitt
Track=Sensemayá - Chant for Killing a Snake (2000)
Translator=Langston Hughes
rateyourmusic.com/song/eartha-...
I can't get enough of tenor man Peter Schreier, especially in Schubert lieder.
Miles Davis said he just LOVED Fred Astaire's clothes.
Miles was a man of taste.
The Hockey Diaries
22 February 2026
Problem with most people who imagine themselves to be witty and clever is that they're neither.
26 February 2026
Billie Holiday: Lady in Autumn, The Best of the Verve Years (feat. Ben Webster)
Live at Montmartre (feat. Ben Webster)
Lush Life: The Billy Strayhorn Songbook (feat. Ben Webster)
Sunday - Bill Coleman & Ben Webster
Satin Doll - Ben Webster
The Best of Art Tatum, feat. Ben Webster
Just think "Antiques Road Show."
Your edition of The Readers Catalog is bound to fetch something.
If you get rid of it, it just goes to a library sale for $1.
Or it gets trashed.
It has intrinsic apart from perhaps just sentimental value.
Keeper, IMHO.
Edwin Frank of NYRB Classics mentions it several times in his survey «Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the 20th-Century Novel».
EF and others write about the Reader's Catalog in the context of a turning point in literary publishing before and after conglomeratization during the 1980s.
Soliloquies: The Latin America Diaries
26 February 2026
Which Cuban literary artists are missing from here?
(3/3)
Sarduy, Severo
Suárez, Karla
#cuba
Soliloquies: The Latin America Diaries
26 February 2026
Which Cuban literary artists are missing from here?
(2/2)
Heredia, José-Maria de
Hijuelos, Oscar
Lezama Lima, José
Lucía, Ena
Martí, José
Menéndez, Rolando
Ortiz, Fernando
Padilla, Heberto
Rivera-Valdés, Sonia
Rodríguez Núñez, Victor
#cuba
Soliloquies: The Latin America Diaries
26 February 2026
Which Cuban literary artists are missing from here?
(1/1)
Álvarez, Carlos Manuel
Cabrera, Lydia
Cabrera Infante, Guillermo
Carpentier, Alejo
Estorino, Abelardo
Ferré, Rosario
Gala, Marcial
García, Cristina
Guerra, Wendy
Guillén, Nicolás
The recurring character is one of the many things to love about Balzac.
I got dozens of them in the essay collection I'm finishing:
Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Colette, Woolf, Stein.
Women RULE this book!
I'm gonna leave it at this, and then move on:
Before the men's game on Sunday, 22 February, did 45/47 NOT call the women's team to congratulate them?
I'm not being snarky.
I'm just asking.
If he DID NOT, that would've been even stupider than the "joke" he made, on speaker phone, on national TV.
USA revoked Du Bois' passport in 1952.
He expatriated to Ghana in 1961, at President Nkruma's behest.
Du Bois died on 27 August 1963--one day before the March on Washington.
I made Du Bois one of dozens of "recurring characters" in CCHR.
He crops up from the first chapter to the last chapter.
Agreed: Schumer's got to go.
Hakeem Jeffries, too?
As a centrist, Independent, very persuadable, "swing" voter I've been saying this since well before the 2024 General Election:
The LEFT needed them a Project 2025 playbook long ass TIME ago.
"Tax the billionaires" isn't radical problem-solving.
The above-referenced is a hockey-fantasy, told from the point of view of a fictional character ("me"), set in NYC c. 1979.
It is, BY FAR, my own favorite chapter from «Countée Cullen's Harlem Renaissance: A Personal History» (Parlor Press, 2024).
Full of cheap shots, chirping, fights, slap shots.🦷
Soliloquies: The Hockey Diaries
25 February 2026
Money Matters
I don't explain away what happened during the 2026 Olympics.
But I did play Jr. Bantams/Bantams in Silicon Valley back in the early 70s.
Hockey's not just a sport.
It's a way of life.
Like writing.
See, CCHR, Ch. 19, pp. 73-82.
Not arguing: just curious.
I endured all 90 minutes of Ramblin' Man.
Is there a particular talking point you're thinking of?
Because I also listened to the VA gov's rebuttal as well as the PBS and NPR speech analyses last night and this morning.
Dems actually stood and applauded certain things.
(2/2)
Think about it: hockey players are (OBVIOUSLY!) media-coached to within an inch of their lives.
At intermissions, after games, during the SOTU, they CLEARLY try to avoid embarrassing themselves, the brass and the Game.
But "boys will be boys" is no excuse on TV.
Especially not for the FBI.
I have «Gangs of New York» on DVD.
Will watch the Daniel Day-Lewis/Bill The Butcher monologue.
Have watched DDL's work with interest.
The Bounty
In the Name of the Father
My Beautiful Laundrette
My Left Foot
There Will Be Blood
#actors #film #LGBTQIA #movies #NowWatching #painting
Soliloquies: The Hockey Diaries
24 February 2026
During the SOTU address, I was wondering:
What if the Wild GM or TEAM USA captain or alternate captain had called a "time out" just before the FBI Dir. was allowed in?
Did leadership "lose the room" and damage control, resulting in a PR disaster?
Soliloquies: The Reading Diaries
25 February 2026
As a book reviewer, I track 4 types of books:
1. Books to Read=2,886
2. Book Already Read=750 (??)
3. Books to Buy=3,239
4. Books Owned=380
Lesson learned?
Ideally, #4 will catch up with #2.
But only if I keep adding to #3.
#1 is limitless.
