Painting, reading, looking at things.

Happy Holidays.

Friends,

My best books of 2025 for the New Museum in New York are now up and available. To read the reviews:
www.newmuseumstore.org/collections/...

My best of at DAP:
www.artbook.com/blog-ex-libr...

A few of my favorites at Point Reyes Books:
ptreyesbooks.com/herberts-fav...

ptreyesbooks.com/book/9781946...

k + h ∞ h + k

Llewelyn Powys on the Lark and his dusky darling, from the ever astonishing Earth Memories, published by @LittleToller

Go out to the roses and the bees and the dove-cots. But especially to the songbirds, that you may learn from them how to sing! Singing is for the convalescent; the healthy can speak.

Nietzsche : Zarathustra

Accessible but veiled.

Letter to a friend.

Your Malkasten is lovely.

Be glad: the house is mined, it will fall.

- Robinson Jeffers
The Broken Balance

The Forbidden Experiment “Before dawn on January 9, 1800, a remarkable creature came out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France.” So begins Roger Shattuck’s book about the so-called Wild Boy of Aveyr...

&, speaking of Shattuck, did you see this?
www.nyrb.com/products/the...

Thank you, Kim!

Absolutely! There is also this one, Satie Remembered – which is quite wonderful (but strangely not part of Penman's bibliography).

Same here, a little nervous (even though I really liked his Fassbinder book last year). Yes, "a delight" sums it up, so far.

2/3 through I am loving it.

My painting "No Omen but Awe" is on view at the permanent collection gallery at the Bolinas Museum. Come west & stop by.

Thank you for your comment, Neal. Yes, "a spell across the day" & all days.

Very few get the biographer they deserve—R. Crumb got lucky. Dan Nadel's wonderfully candid chronicle does not recoil, moralize, or whitewash. It's my book of the month at the New Museum. @newmuseum.bsky.social.

Full review here:
www.newmuseum.org/articles/boo...

Edward Gorey, who painted his toenails black on the day Gertrude Stein died.

A mighty fine book.

"...a handful of dust." || Postcard to a friend.

And I the apparition, I the spectre.

- Whitman

This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night.
[...]
Man was not to be associated with it.

– Thoreau, The Maine Woods

Thank you, Kim. Such a special place.

If you find yourself in New York City, please stop by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in Tribeca to see Louise Despont's beautiful solo exhibition—Afterlifes. I'm working on a book with Louise & wrote the exhibition's accompanying text, which can be found here:

nicellebeauchene.com/exhibitions/...

For k.

Speech is but broken light upon the depth of the unspoken.

- George Eliot

Yuri Knorozov, who studied Mayan hieroglyphic writing.
Why is there no book about him?

Ha. Thanks, Neal. Cioran's fervent pessimism inspires as antidote. Like anti-venom to cure a snake bite. Much more effective than those self-help titles everywhere...
But some snake bites last forever.