BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF READING #6

LIT CRIT #87986954

Some readers adore it,
Some readers abhor it.
By it, I mean,
Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit.
**

CAFFEINE IN THE SUM OF ALL FEARS

“I counted fifty-six references to coffee in 
Tom Clancv’s new thriller “The Sum of all Fears” 
(Putnam, $24.95) . It’s a long book, nearly eight 
hundred pages. Still that’s a lot of coffee. 
Clancy’s people need the caffeine, though, 
because freedom needs vigilance.”

Louis Menand. “Very Popular Mechanics” in 
The New Yorker (September 16, 1992)
**


ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT & DOSTOEVSKY

“I had come up from swimming and was at table alone, 
using bits of toast to scoop up that incomparable
 honey and weeping steadily because once again I 
had come to the great healing last chapter of 
The Brothers Karamazov.
It always chokes me up and fills me with a love of 
mankind which sometimes lasts till noon of the 
following day.”

Alexander Woollcott in a letter to Mrs., Otis Skinner
(August 2, 1935)
**

BOOKS ON TALLULAH BANKHEAD’S NIGHT TABLE

“I wandered into the bedroom, curious to know if
Tallulah read much and what kind of thing. There were
half a dozen books on the bedside table: Shaw’s Theatre 
in the Nineties, Anna Karina, Carroll’s Alice in 
Wonderland,Waugh’s Vile Bodies, Kafka’s Amerika, 
and Noel Coward’s Private Lives.
  “I was absurdly pleased to find four favourites 
of mine in the small bedside collection. Her 
travelling companions, I felt, explained 
some of the vitality she radiated.”

Kieran Tunney. Tallulah Darling of the Gods. 
(New York: 
E.P. Dutton & Co.  1973)

**
ON THE FRIENDSHIP OF WILSON MIZNER AND
O’HENRY

Wilson Mizner “ became friendly with O. Henry , who 
had emerged from an Ohio prison to start a meteoric 
literary career in New York. There was a natural 
sympathy between the two men, not only because both 
had danced along the narrow verge that separates 
the lawless from the lawful, but also because both 
had a keen appreciation of the flip side of respectable 
life, of grifters and gamblers and other people who, 
as the saying went, ‘did the best they could.’ W. 
Mizner was, in fact, a sort of O’Henry character 
in the flesh. And they both liked to sit up late 
and tell stories.”


John Burke. Rogue’s Progress: the Fabulous Adventures 
of Wilson Mizner (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975)
**


EPIGRAPH TO THE MASTER AND MARGARITA by
MIKHAIL BULGHAKOV

   …who are you, then?
   I am part of that power which eternally
  Wills evil and eternally works good.

                    Goethe, Faust

**


ON READING DANTE: FROM HELL TO PURGATORY TO PARADISE

“Whereas Hell and Paradise perdure eternally, Purgatory did not exist before the Incarnation and will cease to exist come judgment Day. In that respect it resembles our own finite human lives, which begin and end in time. The penitents on the mountain’s seven terraces purge their sins in days, years, and centuries. In due time, each one of them will graduate from one terrace to another, and beyond. The sinners in Hell, by contrast, remain forever without prospect of release. It is the difference between the foreclosure of despair and the expansiveness of hope. We humans dwell in the openness of time, and Purgatory is the only realm in Dante’s Comedy where time matters.”

Robert Pogue Harrison. “Labors of Love,” in
The New York Review of Books (December 16, 2021)

**
ON READING DANTE

Read Dante
Andante.

Louis Phillips


**
BOOK WRAPT
“Reid Byers, a computer systems architect, coined 
a term— ‘book wrapt’ –to describe the exhilarating 
comfort of a well-stocked library.”

“The Shelf Life of Home Libraries” in 
The New York Times (December 26, 2021)


**
THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS ON REAL LIFE

“The sculptor Elyn Zimmerman’s iconic rock 
and water installation ‘Marabar’ with granite 
stones around a pool of water, was named  after 
the fictional caves in E. M. Forster’s
novel ‘A Passage to India.’”

“Of Interest” in The New York Times 
(Saturday, January 1,2022)
**
SELLING WORDSWORTH TO THE MODERN
READER


&  so I crushed his face
Under my muddy boots,
Sending pieces of his tongue
deep into his throat.
My other hand crept
Under the skirt of his widow.
I pushed her to the bed &
She was not unwilling.
Now that I've got your attention,
I want to tell you
About the friggin' daffodils,
Just how many of them I saw.


Louis Phillips