The DNA of Literature

The Paris Review has recently started putting their outstanding interview series online. Currently, all of the 1950s and 60s are up - the rest scheduled to appear over the next several months.

The Burroughs Interview, from 1965, is, as would be expected, insightful and entertaining:

I do mean what I say to be taken literally, yes, to make people aware of the true criminality of our times, to wise up the marks. All of my work is directed against those who are bent, through stupidity or design, on blowing up the planet or rendering it uninhabitable. Like the advertising people we talked about, I'm concerned with the precise manipulation of word and image to create an action, not to go out and buy a Coca-Cola, but to create an alteration in the reader's consciousness.

There are a great many others: Borges, Huxley, Kerouac, Nabokov. It is a tremendous resource. Check it out: http://www.parisreview.com/literature.php

Note: The only issue I have with the pdfs is that they are password protected and do not allow you to copy portions of the text - say, to post on a blog in quote or whatever. But in this Age of DRM, I guess it should be expected.

Drought, Gobi Desert

Photographer: Elaine Ling - http://www.elaineling.com/

Turtle Gardian of Kharkhorin

Photographer: Elaine Ling - http://www.elaineling.com

Absence of Memory and Book

Been spending time in Khara-Khorum (The Place Whereof We Should Not Speak) lately. No internet. No posts. Got back 10 days ago. Bit of a culture shock - like getting hit by a car in the middle of the night, waking up the next morning to a face covered in blood and no memory. But, you know, the Bone moves in mysterious ways. Something in the presence of absence: what was once here, informing the shape of the world/flesh from within. Now withdrawn... there is no welcome "home".

Saw this while catching up:

http://www.lookatbook.com/

A collaborative exhibition by four artists from both sides of the Atlantic. Oliver and Rory Jeffers live in Belfast. Mac Premo and Duke Riley live in Brooklyn, NY. For 36 weeks, a sketchbook travels back and forth between these four artists. Each has four days to create a spread in book. Each spread is a response to the one before it, and a call to the artist that follows. By the time it is exhibited under the Lagan Weir, from the 29th of April to the 7th of May 2004, book will have travelled over 60,000 miles.