The Pink Lotus: "Tintin both offers and withholds."

More hilarious perversity making its way around the internet - the Erotic Tintin (from the Guardian).

Thanks to Conversational Reading for the heads up.

I just wanted to draw your attention to today's installment of Pepy's Diary, which features many of my favorite things about England: killing understatement, class violence, and boiled beef.

The Guardian presents "Top Ten Welsh Alternatives to Dylan Thomas" - though they didn't include my favorite piece of Welsh writing, The Mabinogion.

The answer is "no."

I finally got back to work this week (haven't I said this here before?) after weeks of relocation. This week I finished interviews with photographer Taryn Simon and sculptor Michael Rea, reviewed The End of Europe, and updated The Foghorn.

I'm also catching up on a wonderful backlog of emails and tips from Grant, including these from a "treasure trove" of Evelyn Waugh anecdotes:

From Evelyn Waugh, Portrait of a Country Neighbour, Frances Donaldson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967.
He entertained himself with grandiose projects [at Piers Court]. He built what became known as The Edifice —a semi-circular stone wall about ten feet in height, surmounted by battlements and with a paved area beneath it. When this was finished he advertised for human skulls to adorn the battlements. He received a surprising number of replies, which I doubt if he had expected, and he had to refuse most of the offerings. The Edifice was not a great success. Many people thought it hideous and Evelyn himself was not satisfied with it, although he got pleasure out of the building. [pg. 23]

From Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, Selina Hastings, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1994.
For Evelyn, it [a trip to the US in Nov 1948] was a joyless experience, the unbeautiful campuses, the characterless hotels — in New Orleans he smashed open the window of his air-conditioned room with his stick ... [pg. 536]

From To Keep the Ball Rolling: The Memoirs of Anthony Powell: Volume Two, Messengers of Day, Heinemann, London, 1978.
One night [at W's family home on North End road] Waugh asked if I would like to hear the opening chapters of a novel he was writing. ... Waugh's embryonic novel — then called Picaresque, or the Making of an Englishman — was the first ten thousand words, scarcely altered at all later, of Decline and Fall. The manuscript was written with a pen on double-sheets of blue lined-foolscape, the cipher EW printed at the top of the first page of each double-sheet. There were hardly any alterations in the text. ... Some months after the reading aloud of these chapters — probably a moment towards the end of the same year [1927] — I asked Waugh how the novel was progressing. He replied: 'I've burnt it.' [pp. 21-2]

And, while we're on the topic of Mr. Waugh, Allan Massie of the Spectator asks, "Can a novelist write too well?"

Introducing Posh Plums

I wanted to take a minute to promote my mother's new Etsy shop, a great place to find unique, hand-embroidered baby clothes and gifts. Head over there if you need a baby shower gift, and stay tuned for her own website, coming soon.

Check out Susana Raab and her Etsy storefront, where she sells photos of the desks of William Faulker, Flannery O' Connor, and Eudora Welty. I'd love to hang the Faulkner one in my home office.

DailyLit

Great web find: DailyLit. Sign up for daily RSS feeds or emails and read classic literature or reference materials a segment a day. Or read Wikipedia! I just signed up for two Wiki feeds, Greek Mythology and Wine 101.

Excerpt from "The Magical Chorus"

One more from the NYT, an excerpt from Solomon Volkov's The Magical Chorus, a new book on 20th century Russian literature.

NYT Book Review China Issue

This Sunday's New York Times book review is all China. Some links:

Mo Yan's Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem
Wang Anyi's The Song of Everlasting Sorrow
Yan Lianke's Serve the People!

and a piece of "China's Pop Fiction."

Out of print? Rescue it!

Vote to bring back your favorite books here!

The UK's Faber Books is starting a new imprint, Faber Finds, that will be ferreting out great old neglected titles and giving them a second chance.

In this weekend's Guardian, notable authors submit their own votes.

Californians, check out Felicia's new book

My very talented friend Felicia Sullivan (of Small Spiral Notebook) will be reading from her first book, The Sky Isn't Visible From Here, at three bookstores in California. And as a bonus, she will be bringing baked goods!

For more information about both the book and the baked goods, go here.

Wednesday, May 7—SAN FRANCISCO, CA–Booksmith, 1644 Haight Street, 7:00 pm

Friday, May 9—LOS ANGELES, CA–Booksoup, 8818 W Sunset Blvd., 7:00 pm

Saturday, May 10–PASADENA, CA– Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., 4:00 pm

Congratulations to frequent Foghorn contributor Ritija Gupta! Chicago's Metromix voted her one-act comedy "Engaging" as a top pick this week.

If you live near Chicago, check it out at Gorilla Tango Theater's night of one acts, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Through April 30. $15. Tickets: gorillatango.com

See more here.

"I've never travelled in a bus and I've never addressed a stranger on a train."

"The prospect of just being introduced to somebody as just a person, a man as you might say in the street, is entirely repugnant."

Evelyn Waugh undergoes "the most ill-natured interview ever" with the BBC, 1953.

This is just too priceless - A former Lonely Planet writer assigned to cover Columbia admits he just hung around San Francisco and made stuff up.

"I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian Consulate."

See The Foghorn's Lonely Planet Master Guide for our take on this fine organization.

I don't read Russian (unfortunately), but I still enjoyed this Languagehat post on Pushkin, Nabokov, and translation.

Distinguished University of Chicago professor and perennial undergrad favorite Wendy Doniger has an interesting piece in the London Review of Books on Indo-European reconstructions and "The Land East of the Asterisk."

Congratulations to my friend Linara Washington for her film "Kings of the Evening," which will be featured in the Atlanta Film Festival this month.

Read more about the film here and here, and if you live in the Atlanta area, make sure to see "Kings of the Evening," screening April 17th & 18th.

From the National Book Critics Circle blog, Critical Mass, the top five books all book critics should read:

1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817)

2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1947) and Culture and Value (1980)

3. Ezra Pound, Literary Essays (1954) and ABC of Reading (1934)

4. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (1968) and Reflections (1986), better yet the four volumes of Selected Writings (1996-2003)

5. Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson (1995)

I'm surprised Edmund Wilson didn't make the cut. Personally, some of my early inspirations were Howard Bloom, Vladimir Nabokov, and most of all, J.R.R. Tolkien's essay on Beowulf, "The Monsters and the Critics."

The New Yorker's Alex Ross reviews the Met's ill-fated production of "Tristan und Isolde" and famous operatic debacles past.

"The most priceless aspect of the 'Aida' imbroglio was the double take delivered by Ildikó Komlósi, the mezzo singing Amneris, as she turned around to find a replacement tenor embodying Radames, his rumpled gray blouse suggesting a change of scene from ancient Egypt to the bargain floor at H & M."

"I never got to sleep alone till I got married.”

From the latest New Yorker, a gathering of elderly Jewish comedians.

On Malamud

Two great essays this week on the underrated Bernard Malamud, here and here.

Thanks to Grant (as usual) for this great link: Pepys' Diary, presented as a daily weblog, as Pepys would no doubt have intended. Visit daily!

From Monday, March 13:
"Up betimes, this being the first morning of my promise upon a forfeite not to lie in bed a quarter of an hour after my first waking . . . This day my wife begun to wear light-coloured locks, quite white almost, which, though it makes her look very pretty, yet not being natural, vexes me, that I will not have her wear them."

The Times Literary Supplement today turned up two excellent reads, Julian Barnes on Flaubert's letters and Paul Theroux's hilarious send-up of Georges Simenon.

As I try to get into the habit of updating this blog more regularly - and as I look forward to bringing my observations of China to an end soon - I will be sharing more great links sent to me from friends and readers and the many social bookmarking sites and subscriptions to which I sacrifice my time.

From Grant, A Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges:

"For me death is a hope, the irrational certitude of being abolished, erased and forgotten. When I’m sad, I think, what does it matter what happens to a twentieth-century South American writer; what do I have to do with all of this? You think it matters what happens to me now, if tomorrow I will have disappeared? I hope to be totally forgotten, I believe that this is death. But perhaps I’m wrong and what follows is another life on another plane, with distinct conditions, no less interesting than this one, and I will accept that life, too, just as I have accepted this one. But I would prefer not to remember this one in the other, being younger."

No, I still don't like Jane Smiley,

but I do like this link from Grant.

More from Grant - see Cavett for more. This is an excerpt from Mailer's (third-person) written account of the show, including a run-in with Gore Vidal before the airing:

At this moment, alone in the green room, he felt a tender and caressing hand on the back of his neck. It was Gore. Vidal had never touched him before, but now had the tender smile of a man who would claim, "It doesn't matter, old sport, what we say about each other — it's just pleasant to see an old friend."

Mailer answered with an openhanded tap across the cheek. It was not a slap; neither was it a punch. Just a stiff tap.

To his amazement, Vidal gave him a stiff tap back.

Norman smiled. He leaned forward and looked pleasantly at Gore. He put his hand to the back of Gore's neck. Then he butted him in the head.

Thanks again to Grant for sending me this from the new Paris Review Interviews, Vol. II., now on my Christmas list - from an interview with Harold Bloom. The interviewer narrates within the brackets...

(Midway through the interview...)

BLOOM

....But the early books of Wilson Knight are very fine indeed--certainly one of the most considerable figures of twentieth-century criticism, though he's mostly forgotten now.

[At this point we wander into the kitchen, where Mrs. Bloom is watching the evening news.]

BLOOM

Now let's wait for the news about this comeback for the wretched Yankees. I've been denouncing them. They haven't won since 1979. That's ten years and they're not going to win this year. They're terrible.... What's this?

[TV: The Yankees with their most dramatic win of the year this afternoon.... And the Tigers lost again.]

BLOOM

Oh my God! That means we're just four games out! How very upcheering.

MRS. BLOOM

Jessica Hahn.

BLOOM

Jessica Hahn is back!

[TV: ...hired on as an on-air personality at a Top 40 radio station in Phoenix... ]

BLOOM

How marvelous!

[TV: Playboy magazine had counted on Hahn to come through. She appeared nude in a recent issue.]

BLOOM

Splendid. ...But oh, let us start again, Antonio. What were we talking about?

[We return to the living room.]