Super excited to be included in issue 18 of the Arkansas International illustrating and adapting a 1957 short by Charles Portis into a comic. Comes out Saturday! Here’s a brief story from Ozarks at Large story on the issue here with more info www.kuaf.com/show/ozarks-...
Paul Theroux’s latest, Burma Sahib, about young Orwell.
Happy birthday to Lowell George, whose wandering spirit and slanted and enchanted imagination enlivens us more with each passing day, even as we lament his tragic absence. A few years back I wrote about Lowell and Little Feat for Oxford American. I'm still willing.
oxfordamerican.org/magazine/iss...
This is so great. I miss working with you on these brilliant deep dives.
90 trips! That’s like the Empire State Stair Climb!
This is why I do farmer’s carry at the gym.
The full set but you need the Library of America volume as a topper for the Chronology and Notes.
A stack of books by Charles Portis, including two copies of True Grit and a hardcover of Escape Velocity.
We are having our library shelving rebuilt, which means 200–250 trips from the second floor to the basement carrying shopping bags of books. Jenkins joined me for the first dozen, then tapped out.
It’s nice seeing the books. Hello, you wonderful weirdo.
Can confirm. Almost everything I’ve looked up on Google lately has generated an overview with some easily refutable mistake in it, like declaring that Bryan Cranston narrated the audiobook of True Grit.
Text from the copyright page of Nancy Lemann’s Lives of the Saints: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lemann, Nancy author | Dyer, Geoff writer of introduction Title: Lives of the saints / by Nancy Lemann; introduction by Geoff Dyer. Description: New York: New York Review Books, 2026. | Series: New York Review Books classics Identifiers: LCCN 2025038173 (print) | LCCN 2025038174 (ebook) | ISBN 9798896230281 paperback | ISBN 9798896230298 ebook Subjects: LCSH: Eccentrics and eccentricities-Fiction | New Orleans
Library of Congress Subject Heading:
Eccentrics and eccentricities.
Hell, yeah. They created a whole subject heading for Nancy Lemann and Charles Portis.
My book Carry the Rock was first published in 2010 but was reissued in 2023 by @uarkpress.bsky.social and is now being recorded as an audiobook. Flattered that it has legs. This @wsj.com review by Eddie Dean linked it to Charles Portis’s work without knowing I knew him! www.wsj.com/articles/SB1...
I predict delight!
Updike writes about Schultz in one of his collected prose books, Hugging the Shore, I think. And compares him to my choice for the MOST neglected great writer, Gilbert Rogin. Yes, lots to wade into in these two books of reconsiderations.
I got curious about the recommendations of Rediscoveries II and of course @neglectedbooks.com was on it. neglectedbooks.com?page_id=76
“There are more more accidents.”
*don’t. Alas I can’t even put the word “don’t” in talking about TBRs.
Nice finds and great rec for Delilah, though alas I need more more TBRs.
Like Niven Busch -huh?-recommending Marcus Goodrich - huh? Gotta love JCO hanging in there in the 2020s.
![SHEPARD TO DARK
January 7, 2007-Kentucky
[handwritten]
Dear John,
Sitting here by the fire in Kentucky on a grayish wet day & happened to notice a book laying randomly on a table— The Dog of the South by our old friend Charlie Portis & remembered that mad day in San Rafael years ago when, stoned of course, we absolutely had to have a copy of that book in our possession. It became a matter of life & death as we rushed over to the library in the white Nova only to discover they were about to close for the day & we began begging & pleading with the librarian how desperate our situation was—how far we'd traveled to get there-how we needed to have that book as though it were our last drink of water. Then, of course, the poor fellow let us in, we located the book, checked it out then, as I remember, neither one of us managed to read more than about five pages of the damn thing & we were on to the next mad caper-stealing bathrobes or something like that. Those were indeed rare & cherished days full of a wild sense of being alive but not having a clue why or what or how.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lxjsf5tg55vsq6t7xanl3vtc/bafkreidvl5p224lwm4cckvsun3eobhbqf4rmg6hev3xophmgjtep55ql34)
SHEPARD TO DARK January 7, 2007-Kentucky [handwritten] Dear John, Sitting here by the fire in Kentucky on a grayish wet day & happened to notice a book laying randomly on a table— The Dog of the South by our old friend Charlie Portis & remembered that mad day in San Rafael years ago when, stoned of course, we absolutely had to have a copy of that book in our possession. It became a matter of life & death as we rushed over to the library in the white Nova only to discover they were about to close for the day & we began begging & pleading with the librarian how desperate our situation was—how far we'd traveled to get there-how we needed to have that book as though it were our last drink of water. Then, of course, the poor fellow let us in, we located the book, checked it out then, as I remember, neither one of us managed to read more than about five pages of the damn thing & we were on to the next mad caper-stealing bathrobes or something like that. Those were indeed rare & cherished days full of a wild sense of being alive but not having a clue why or what or how.
Only today did I learn that Sam Shepard hung out with Charles Portis, likely in Deming, NM with Shepard’s longtime friend Johnny Dark. This is from the Dark-Shepard correspondence, Two Prospectors, published by U of Texas Press in 2013. (More readable in alt-text)
Overlook edition of Joseph Roth’s The Radetzsky March
A hardcover edition (with Mylar protective cover) of the novel The Lost Trail of the Sahara by R. Frisón-Roche, translated by Paul Bowles.
El Dorado, Arkansas, surprised me on a weekend family trip with its pair of English telephone booths repurposed as little free libraries. Escaped with these gems.
Thanks for your time, your conversation and your book!
"There's a case to be made for Elizabeth Nelson as the best rock lyricist of this moment. Nelson and the Paranoid Style are the most persuasive argument I know for the ongoing vitality of rock and roll." Psyched by this rad review of 'Known Associates' on Fresh Air today! www.npr.org/2026/03/06/n...
Draft of “Visions of Johanna”
Really loved Woody’s art too, this expressionistic one of kids in a band.
A total pleasure to meet @bdralyuk.bsky.social IRL on a quick trip to Tulsa. He told me a touching story about how Portis came to mean so much to him and we shared Berryman lines. Also, for those like me with meager output, a visit to the Guthrie and Dylan centers is both enthralling and humbling.
Closest you’ll get for now is the “Chronology” in the back of the Library of America volume.
Congrats to Brett Martin on a National Magazine Award nomination for this story. You can never go wrong reading Brett.
Newsletter from Rep. French Hill has headline showing Arkansas spelled “Arkasnas.”
Shouldn’t expect anything from politicians but this went out to his constituents (me, unfortunately), without any follow-up apology or acknowledgment.
Report: High-energy and hilarious long-form storytelling for an hour and a half. A master.
Photos by Jesse Chan-Norris.
In 2009, I “opened” for John Mulaney at an event put on by the Lowbrow Reader comedy zine. I was introducing neglected novelist Gilbert Rogin, whose works I helped get back into print. Tonight I’m seeing @mulaney.bsky.social perform live again, in a basketball arena in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
