Among The Jumbled Heap

The ring of fire still burns around you and I

A few days late for the anniversary of Cash's death, a 'letter of note'.  I relate to that to-do list, especially item one. http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/09/ring-of-fire-still-burns-around-you-and.html

In Which I Say a Few Words…

...about this site, which is undergoing a template transformation for no good reason. I have not put much time into this site because I don't have much time. That's all I got to say about that.

Book Objects – Wallace Stevens

Luke came into two handsome editions of Wallace Stevens. The Friends of the Library Booksale at the Fateville Public Library is a place where you can buy tattered paperbacks from Patterson to Grisham and first-edition hardbacks from the likes of Stevens. (Used book sales in university towns are always a good place for a find.) The book featured in the photos is one Luke kindly let me borrow. Transport to Summer was originally published in 1947, but the edition pictured here is from the s...

Rattray, Oppression Literature, and something else pithy since these lists in blog titles should come in threes.

As I read and as I write, I always have jingling around my brain this idea that oppression makes art better.  I do not know how true the idea is, but it trips through my synapses nonetheless.  My one reader will have noticed this theme cropping up explicitly and implicitly here at the Jumbled Heap.  In his essay "Honey-Winged Song," David Rattray also explores the idea of what makes the world's hardship literature great.  I did not know of Rattray, but a week ago, Luke plugged my book-empt...

Gospel of Anarchy

For the last month, I’ve been thinking about this blog post by Katy Derbyshire “Richard Kämmerlings: Das kurze Glück der Gegenwart”. Despite the pedantic sounding title, Derbyshire’s posting is in praise of the first person in critical writing about books. She uses Kammerling as a an example of how German book critics are beginning to spice their criticism with the personal, using the first person to express how the literature interacts with their own life. This resonated with me as a reade...

Snow Day

I ventured out on foot today, for as you can see our car was buried.  This is my first blog post composed w my phone using Wordpress for Android.

2010: My Year In Reading

OR Strikes and Gutters Cobain and Taylor : Strike and Strike Early in the year, in the cold of January, I got a surprise with Heavier then Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain. I thought Heavier would be a mindless read, something to keep the brain processing words while I cast about for a better book. I read the book while poised next to Skull Creek, a bitter Ozark wind crippling my hands, and the book took me places in the mind I had not been in fifteen years. It was good to go back an...

Moby Dick: the Boring Parts

What follows is a rambling missive that I wrote over a year ago for the blog but never finished. I am now throwing it out into the world for no good reason. Last night, or rather, early this morning, I finished reading Moby Dick for the second time. Often, I had wanted to read Moby Dick again but was prevented from doing so by that same perception of the book that keeps many from reading for the first time, viz. The Boring Parts. Moby Dick begins with the classic line "Call me Ishmael," ...

Daily Tao

In the Tao, the two forces of being and not-being grapple with one another, an eternal struggle that brings about creation and un-creation. Winter is a void but Spring comes from this void. Forces interact to bring about a balance of being and not-being; order and chaos; beauty and ugliness. What emerges is not so much a battle but a natural cycle. Today I live in a stasis with a tiny dot of restlessness. Yesterday, I lived with the opposite. They cycle continues. Today, I have a Confucia...

Bill Murray Again

Bill Murray grants a rare interview with GQ, in which he responds to the rumors of Ghostbusters III, maligns Ron Howard (sort of), and ponders a return to comedic films. Read it immediately. Bill Murray is Ready to See You Now Here's a quote of Bill responding to the question of what he watches on TV and turning it in to a commentary on Obama's election: I watch sports, I watch movies, Current TV on the satellite—I kind of like that. Honestly, I'm just easily bored. C-SPAN can be reall...