I've got to make this one quick. Still trying to catch up from last week's bout with influenza and now a glance at the calendar reveals just how few days I have to plan this cross-country move. Can we add at least a day or two to February? I'm seven books behind on my minireviewing and I want to write up the Jeff Tweedy show from Saturday night. Never enough time in the day. Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day to all of my readers, friends, and especially Elaine who keeps putting up with me after all of these years. You're the best, Lainey.
A group of professors and students at the University of Mississippi--aka Ole Miss--are pleading with the state's lawmakers to reconsider their naming of Paul Ott's "I Am Mississippi" as the state's official poem. Just what are they saying? That lines like "I'm a Gospel Singer and the old folks at home/And I'm the eagle on the top of the capitol's dome" or "'I'm Walter Peyton catchin' a pass, Elvis Presley,/Coon hounds and bird dogs and tea of Sassafras" don't rise to the level of Faulkner or Welty's literary greatness. Snobs.
"On February 20th, Anita Thompson will offer a free download to Hunter's fans as a thank you for your support over the last very difficult year. The download will be available on this site starting February 20th."
What is Pico Iyer trying to imply?
Implication thought about friends he'd known. His great companion Henry James could hardly order dinner or declare his love, he was so attached to Implication. That woman in Bath had used him as a manservant to deliver her round-about love letters. In Japan, they'd almost made a cult of him, saying so little that the poems he worked on were almost blank pages. Yet none of these people was a threat to anyone who could see clearly. They all had something to say because — this was the point — they all had something not to say.
"After several passengers handed him money for books, Mr. Gilmore pulled a credit card swipe machine out of his jacket and added with a grin, 'And the brother also accepts all major credit cards.'" Street-lit writer and entrepreneur Dewitt Gilmore gets the attention of the NY Times.
Residents of Columbus, Georgia, reminisce about Truman Capote and his time spent in the city:
The wasting of much of his life because of alcoholism is a memory that saddens those who knew Capote. It was his drinking that makes one visit to Columbus so memorable.
It was December 1979. Capote gave a reading of his short story "A Christmas Memory" at the Springer Opera House. It was a fundraiser for the Springer. It was Capote's idea.
Billy Winn of Columbus was among those in attendance. An author and former Ledger-Enquirer staffer, Winn has written about that night in some detail. He says that for several days before the reading, "Capote spent time at St. Francis Hospital drying out." But after release, he had begun to drink again.
The night of the show, Winn says Capote was "slack-jawed and drunk."
Did anyone else stumble upon the new Flaming Lips album that may or may not have leaked to the world? If so, what did you think? I've listened to it a few times now and I'm not very impressed. Lots of interesting things going on, but overall, it bored me. I won't give up on it though. Next up, a listen with headphones on. Sometimes that's enough to do the trick.
The new Flaming Lips ranked right between the Neko Case and Beth Orton advances that crossed my desk last week (better than the latter, much more ordinary than the former). Seek out the new Neko Case, it is truly wondrous. The Lips album seemed great in spots, but those were few and far between.
Posted by: largeheartedboy | February 14, 2006 at 10:43 AM