possibly the last #InkStains update for today: Graphic Illusions, with work from #TimKirk, #WendyPini (then Fletcher), #GeorgeBarr, Jeff Jones, Steve Fabian, #SteveDitko, and more! www.kenmeyerjr.com/ink-stains-v...
#comics #fantasy #fanzines
As a young man, Charles Wright once found himself standing next to Ezra Pound beneath the porticos of Venice. They were both looking at the Basilica di San Marco but hearing different music. Wright thought about saying, “I like your poems.” But silence seemed best, and they parted. #inkstains
J.G. Ballard made his break writing by science fiction for magazines like New Worlds. Unlike many peers, however, he insisted the only alien planet is Earth and the final frontier is not outer but inner space. #inkstains
Friends went on to Princeton and Yale, but those doors were closed on Hunter S. Thompson, who was removed from a high school classroom in handcuffs and spent 30 days in jail before graduation. What Ivy League friends remember was not just the gonzo daring but his bedroom lined with books. #inkstains
Mavis Gallant’s adored father died when she was just 10, but no one told her for three years, until her mother was ready to remarry. She thought he was in England. #inkstains
At five, Flannery O’Connor trained a chicken to walk backwards, a feat so astonishing it made the local newsreel. Pretty much the high point, she later acknowledged. #inkstains
Kafka’s first book, Mediation, sold eleven copies at a local bookstore. Having bought 10 of them himself, he was mystified by who might have picked up the 11th. #kafka #inkstains
Borges’ History of Eternity, published in 1932, sold 37 copies. He imagined tracking down each of his readers and thanking them personally. #borges #inkstains
Flannery O’Connor described her first novel, Wise Blood – about a tormented, amoral street-preacher-against-God who binds his body in barbed wire, blinds himself, and ends up dead in a ditch – as autobiographical. Also a comedy. Her mom stopped after nine pages. #inkstains
In a single year, 1906, Félix Fénéon wrote more than a thousand stories. Each in just three lines. They would have disappeared along with so much other ephemera but for his mistress, who kept clippings from the newspapers where they ran in her scrap book. #inkstains
Once Gertrude Stein’s ambition was to describe every type of person who ever had or might exist. She considered her major obstacle to be time. #inkstains
Beneath a dining table, the child who would become Annie Dillard curled up at Evan S. Connell’s feet and dreamt of marriage. Women wrote him notes like this: “What are the chances of your coming to Toronto to see me on stage with no clothes on?” The chances were good. #inkstains
When Gravity’s Rainbow won the National Book Award, it was received, on Thomas Pynchon’s behalf, by Professor Irwin Corey, the world’s foremost authority. Subject matter ambiguous. #inkstains #pynchon
Within two weeks, Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women, published 11 years after her death, outsold all the books she’d published during her lifetime. #inkstains #luciaberlin
The Chilean writer Samanta Schweblin has sought to emulate the wartime experience of her grandfather who, at just 17, would sneak at night as close to the German lines as he could get in hopes of overhearing the enemy discuss their plans. Victory was returning alive. #inkstains
Renata Adler spent New Years Eve in New York with an older community of Germany refugees and intellectuals, people like Kafka’s publisher. When she insisted she needed to be asleep by midnight, they assumed she was slipping out for another party or perhaps to meet a lover. She wasn’t. #inkstains
Between 1948 and 1977, Philip K. Dick was generally married, although five different women were involved. #inkstains #philipkdick
Two years before Money, Martin Amis published Invasion of the Space Invaders: An Addicts Guide to Battle Tactics, Big Scores and the Best Machines. Today a used copy on Amazon lists at $989.47. #inkstains
Metaphors came to William Gass in squadrons. On the other hand, lines of poetry approach Anne Carson like glaciers out of the dark while she steers her ship toward the South Pole. #inkstains
When invited to participate in a Parisian event for the hundred greatest living writers, Patricia Highsmith declined. She had no doubt she was among the greatest, but alive? That was less clear. #inkstains
Love the #inkstains posts--I'm so glad Markson is still on people's minds. (Discarded reminded me that I've got a couple of his Strand books, though nothing annotated)
That makes my day -- so glad you liked it. I've been toying around with more in the Markson vein. Check out #inkstains for more that in the general family.
The Argentine novelist Antonio Di Benedetto stood in front of a firing squad four times. #inkstains #books #writers
Cora Taylor ran a brothel in Jacksonville. Slightly after, she became a war correspondent in the Greco-Turkish War. In between, she met Stephen Crane. #inkstains #writers #books
Patrick Leigh Fermor was expelled from a school for difficult children. He walked from Holland to Istanbul in a year, journey that took another 33 to become a book. In between, he lived with a Romanian noblewoman, kidnapped a German general, & spent time in monasteries and silence. #inkstains #books
Italo Svevo wrote two books in his thirties, which are forgotten although Joyce admired them. And then, after nearly a thirty year silence, The Confessions of Zeno, which is not. #inkstains #writers #books
