Alice Wins !

The Nobel Prize for literature. A short interview.

.

Donlon Books and Conor Donlon's upstairs apartment.

"...A gallerist from Germany who has an amazing bookshop told me that you have to be prepared to sell everything. There have been some things in the past ...which I have been very reluctant to part with, but ...I do believe most things come around again. If I am in the business of selling books then that’s what I got to do. A lot of my favorite books I don’t actually own at the moment, and may or may not again, but that’s fine. ...I don't care if I sell the books, I just like collecting them. It's a way to express myself."
- Conor Donlon

photographs by Ben Benoliel.

.

Edmund de Waal

porcelain, salt, water, family, display, belonging, arrangements, aesthetics, John Dewey, Barnett Newman, Donald Judd, Notus, the bundling of kindling, and the city of Jericho.

A ceramicist and writer, Edmund de Waal talks here about his installation in the new V&A ceramics galleries and here about his family memoir The Hare With Amber Eyes.

.

He's 200

Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens, the great creator of multiple characters. Check out his elaboarte, flourished signature. A great antiquarian, clearly he was also a guy who loved a good punch bowl.

CHARLES DICKENS PUNCH
From a letter from Charles Dickens to "Mrs. F." (Amelia Austin Fillonoau), January 14, 1847

To Make Three Pints of Punch

Peel into a very strong common basin (which may be broken, in case of accident, without damage to the owner's peace or pocket) the rinds of three lemons, cut very thin, and with as little as possible of the white coating between the peel and the fruit, attached. Add a double-handfull [sic] of lump sugar (good measure), a pint of good old rum, and a large wine-glass full of brandy — if it not be a large claret-glass, say two. Set this on fire, by filling a warm silver spoon with the spirit, lighting the contents at a wax taper, and pouring them gently in. [L]et it burn for three or four minutes at least, stirring it from time to Time. Then extinguish it by covering the basin with a tray, which will immediately put out the flame. Then squeeze in the juice of the three lemons, and add a quart of boiling water. Stir the whole well, cover it up for five minutes, and stir again. At this crisis (having skimmed off the lemon pips with a spoon) you may taste. If not sweet enough, add sugar to your liking, but observe that it will be a little sweeter presently. Pour the whole into a jug, tie a leather or coarse cloth over the top, so as to exclude the air completely, and stand it in a hot oven ten minutes, or on a hot stove one quarter of an hour. Keep it until it comes to table in a warm place near the fire, but not too hot. If it be intended to stand three or four hours, take half the lemon-peel out, or it will acquire a bitter taste. The same punch allowed to cool by degrees, and then iced, is delicious. It requires less sugar when made for this purpose. If you wish to produce it bright, strain it into bottles through silk. These proportions and directions will, of course, apply to any quantity.

From Punch: The Delights and Dangers of the Flowing Bowl by David Wondrich (a lovely Perigree book, from Penguin)

.

I think Just Kids is something really beautiful. I started reading it this week, at night, before going to sleep, and during the days I frequently find myself thinking about Patti Smith's voice and stories, looking forward to bedtime and getting back into that time and place with her.

The way I feel about literary criticism is that it should mostly be disregarded, but here's something not bad written by E. White about Just Kids.

.

Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo
by Nicholas de Monchaux
(MIT Press)

A story about the triumph of Oldenburg-like soft objects over phallic, rigid ones, and of hard-working seamstresses over hard-nosed engineers.

“Sewing a spacesuit was in many ways similar to sewing a bra or girdle—the Singer machines and pattern templates were identical.” - N. de Monchaux

One if Five Good Books by Adam Gopnik.

.

Not only was she a skilled and published cartoonist, but Flannery O'Connor loved birds. She made suits of clothes for her chickens as a child, kept over 40 peacocks at a time, and raised over 100 ducks, hens, and geese at her family’s ancestral farm in Andalusia, Georgia. Her peacocks popped up more than once in her work, as in The Displaced Person:

“What a beauti-ful birrrrd!” the priest murmured.
“Another mouth to feed,” Mrs. McIntyre said, glancing in the peafowl’s direction.
“And when does he raise his splendid tail?” asked the priest.
“Just when it suits him,” she said. “There used to be twenty or thirty of those things on the place but I’ve let them die off. I don’t like to hear them scream in the middle of the night.”
“So beauti-ful,” the priest said. “A tail full of suns,” and he crept forward on tiptoe and looked down on the bird’s back where the polished gold and green design began. The peacock stood still as if he had just come down from some sun-drenched height to be a vision for them all ...

“The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran or Peru. It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all.”

-Vladimir Nabokov

.

i like his socks.

.

Mourir aprés de toi, a beautiful new animated film by Olympia Le-Tan and Spike Jonze.

via Julie. XO

A

Abutilon (

Abutilon

) . . .

Meditation

Acacia (

Acacia

) . . .

Secret love

Acanthus (

Acanthus

) . . .

Artifice

Agapanthus (

Agapanthus

) . . .

Loveletter

Allium (

Allium

) . . .

Prosperity

Almond blossom (

Amygdaluscommunis

) . . .

Indiscretion

I was out of breath by the time I returned to the house. The living room was empty, and I stepped inside to unwrap the dahlias. The flowers were perfect starbursts, layers of white-tipped purple petals unfurling from tight buds of a center. Biting off an elastic band, I detangled the stems. The girls would never understand the meaning of the dahlias (the meaning itself an ambiguous statement of encouragement); even so, I felt an unfamiliar lightness as I paced the long hall, slipping a stem under each closed bedroom door.

-Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers.

from here.

speaking of

beautiful book covers. I've been reading this again.