Pauline Kael vs. Joan Didion

More Pauline Kael gossip... this time the inside scoop about her feud with Joan Didion.

via The Awl

The Groucho Marx / T.S. Elliot Letters

I can't imagine much better that correspondence between these two. And it exists!

coverage via The Economist

Maurice Sendak Interview

I like a good old curmudgeonly children's author with some weltschmerz.

Maurice Sendak interviewed in the Gaurdian

The Fine Art of the Heist

I want to read this.

"'Stealing Rembrandts' tells the story of modern art theft through the thefts of a single artist's work. It is a clever strategy, and Rembrandt a natural choice. The 17th-century Dutch master was heroically prolific; more than 2,000 of his paintings, drawings and etchings survive. Some of his canvases have fetched auction bids in the tens of millions of dollars. And because Rembrandt was a painter of masterly economy, his works tend to be small and portable. As a result, Rembrandt is among the most often stolen artists, topped only by Picasso. Some 80 of Rembrandt's works have been pilfered in the past 100 years..."


Read the rest of Benjamin Wallace's review here in the Wall Street Journal.

Lost Library by Joy Garnett

Lost Library is a new social media project by painter Joy Garnett. She writes: 

"I am sharing the library that I’ve been accumulating for 15 years by giving some of it away. Every day I will pick a good window well in Soho, deposit some books, and immediately tweet the location with a photograph and the hashtag #LostLibrary.

These are books for people to browse and to take away if they like. Begun on June 19th 2011, Lost Library is an ongoing social media performance."

Issac Asimov and L.A. Library Closings

Isaac Asimov and the library were huge influences on the man I grew up to be and what is happening to librarians in L.A.'s school system is a travesty.

Why Isaac Asimov Would Be Ashamed of Los Angeles' Schools

A Country Without Libraries

A Country Without Libraries

By Charles Simic

Photo by Robert Dawson

Badlands Unlimited

Paul Chan has launched a publishing venture called "Badlands Unlimited" that specializes in artist's ebooks. Potential game changer?

Read

How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later

This 1978 essay by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick seriously fascinates me. The paranoia, schizophrenia, and religious dogma can be hard to wade through at times, but parsed among the crazy are some fairy profound insights into the nature and fiction of art. A must read in my book.

Japan's Libraries

Not to minimize the human toll by any means, but I found these photos of libraries after the Japan disaster very affecting for some reason.

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries

So many thanks to my friend Joanne for posting this. I have been in love with libraries since I was 12 and this really is like a series of love letters for me.

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries

My Dream Library

Sent to me by my good friend James, who apparently knows what I like very well. A concept rendering (not real) of a design for the new Stockholm Library, and perhaps not by accident a Borges story come to life as well.

http://blog.longnow.org/2009/12/08/wall-of-knowledge/

Gertrude Goldschmidt

"I believed in the infinite seriality of time, in a growing and reeling net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. that entanglement of times growing near, growing out, intersecting or secularly ignoring themselves, embraces all possibilities."

Jorge Luis Borges, the Garden of Forking Paths, 1941

The Art of Memory Blog has some really good Gertrude Goldschmidt drawings up accompanied by excerpts from texts written by Paul Klee, Jorge Luis Borges, and Phillippe Jaccottet.

http://theartofmemory.blogspot.com/2008/04/between-transparency-and-invisible.html