Frozen raspberry thawing in our kitchen sink right now.

Time to quote Rilke again:

If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches, for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place.

“
My writing isn’t experimental. When I’ve nodded to the reportoire of avant-garde effects, I took it for granted that the experiments in question were conducted by others, in the past. Now they’re part of the palette. A literary critic who puts the word “experimental” within a mile of my stuff is either in bad faith or ill-informed about a century including Oulipo, Language poetry, and, well, surrealism.

- a quote from Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence that I like in spite of being so thoroughly “ill-informed about a century including Oulipo” that I don’t think I’d ever seen the word?/surname?/floor wax?/dessert topping? “Oulipo.”

Wikipedia’s list of “Oulipian constraints” includes:

Replace every noun in a text with the seventh noun after it in a dictionary. For example, “Call me Ishmael. Some years ago…” becomes “Call me islander. Some yeggs ago…”. Results will vary depending upon the dictionary used.

Youngling can always count on a murrain for a fancy proselyte stylist.

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UPDATE (moments later):

And now I’m questioning whether “you,” being a pronoun, should have been made into “youngling” or not. Never mind.

(SUPPOSEDLY) FUN FACT: My dad refers to me as “the miser.” Today I treated my cheapskate ass to something nice. I intend to defray my costs by reading every word either very slowly or twice. Why do I expect great things from an issue of n+1? This. Click for high-res photo

(SUPPOSEDLY) FUN FACT: My dad refers to me as “the miser.”

Today I treated my cheapskate ass to something nice. I intend to defray my costs by reading every word either very slowly or twice.

Why do I expect great things from an issue of n+1? This.

Book pitch I may have made here before and/or may be plagiarizing

I will spend one year reading nothing but books written by people who wrung a book deal out of their decision to do a particular thing for one year.

Sightings of great literature in cheap paperback format make me unreasonably happy. I love colored endpapers and a two-color foil-stamped cover as much as the next guy. But I hate the thought that a one-size-fits-all price would ever prevent someone from buying a book they’d love. Only yesterday I couldn’t get myself to hand over 22 bucks for Wislawa Szymborska’s 96-page Here. Offer me a paperback. Offer me motel-room-Bible-grade paper stock and a binding I’ll need to mend with duct tape midway through the first read. I won’t come crying when a few pages rip. The photo above is from today. I found this copy of Pale Fire on a nonprofit’s 25-cents-a-book cart. I talked it up. I declaimed “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure of the windowpane” to an audience made up of one third-grader, one fourth-grader, and one fellow dad. The dad shelled out his 25 cents and bought the book, which will only encourage my grating evangelism. Click for high-res photo

Sightings of great literature in cheap paperback format make me unreasonably happy. I love colored endpapers and a two-color foil-stamped cover as much as the next guy. But I hate the thought that a one-size-fits-all price would ever prevent someone from buying a book they’d love.

Only yesterday I couldn’t get myself to hand over 22 bucks for Wislawa Szymborska’s 96-page Here. Offer me a paperback. Offer me motel-room-Bible-grade paper stock and a binding I’ll need to mend with duct tape midway through the first read. I won’t come crying when a few pages rip.

The photo above is from today. I found this copy of Pale Fire on a nonprofit’s 25-cents-a-book cart. I talked it up. I declaimed “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure of the windowpane” to an audience made up of one third-grader, one fourth-grader, and one fellow dad. The dad shelled out his 25 cents and bought the book, which will only encourage my grating evangelism.

“
We’ve gone many months, and once nearly a decade, in the dark, not knowing whether we’ll speak again. I’m furious at her now, but writing this as a valentine, I’d like to think: Come back, crazy friend. I’m big enough for you still. I’ve got what it costs to know you, and though I may seem reluctant to spend it all in one place, I’d hate to die with it in my pocket.

- from Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence

The whole setup to that passage is also great. Here’s part of it:

I’m still looking for the crazy wherever I can find it. It’s hard enough to kick against the plastic Victorianisms of our culture, the social sarcophagus of daily life. Even attempting it can make you crazy, let alone succeeding as well as (Philip K.) Dick did. I like helpless braggarts, obsessive fools, angry people. My ears prick up at the word “pretentious”—that’s usually the movie I want to see, the book I want to read, the scene I want to make. Nearly anyone I’ve found worth knowing was difficult enough, vivid enough, to qualify at some point as my crazy friend.

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UPDATE (a few minutes later)

A couple more things:

* Thanks to Austin Kleon. His 1/27 post is the reason I’m reading Lethem’s book. Just the picture, really. All that highlighting. I was intrigued and needed to read it myself. Please consider pre-ordering Austin’s forthcoming book, Steal Like An Artist. 

* Narcissism prevents me from thinking of Lethem without also thinking of this old post of mine, documenting Lethem’s uncommonly memorable 2009 appearance here in my neighborhood. Since I already used the word “narcissism” in the previous sentence, I don’t need to be coy about linking to Macy Halford’s newyorker.com post about my post. Part of me still can’t quite believe that happened. I will continue to link to it until it feels real. Daily, perhaps.

“
… if you want to drive a person mad in a fame culture, offer him only a little fame, the very least amount you can scrape up. This happens every day, but it happens in slow motion to novelists. We’re like the guy who gets voted off first on Survivor, except instead of departing the island we walk its beaches forever, muttering.

- from Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence

“
Your parents are the first memo to come across your desk, on a page so large you can’t see past its edges.
- from Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence
Click for high-res photo
Not available on Kindle at this time. Click for high-res photo

Not available on Kindle at this time.

Though friends and relatives always admired him for his empathy, the pigeon in the drugstore parking lot doesn’t want to hear about your bad day. Click for high-res photo

Though friends and relatives always admired him for his empathy, the pigeon in the drugstore parking lot doesn’t want to hear about your bad day.

Nice belt. Or so I’m told. Click for high-res photo

Nice belt. Or so I’m told.