by

Berger

 John Peter Berger, writer and art critic, born 5 November 1926; died 2 January 2017.johnberger

It’s his book that hides much of my author-photo face for The Fat Man. The rich family in the novel is also named for him: The Bergers. I don’t mean to imply that he lived a rich life. In reality it’s the opposite, a bit of irony. He was a Marxist and the family is monied and ungenerous. He in fact gave with abandon to the Black Panthers.

It is mostly impossible for me to read his books. I have had And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos for years now. I read a little and get so inspired-excited that I go off to write or to sketch or just think. (He goes nicely with some Glenn Gould piano.) Eventually I come back to the book and once again I only get so far…sometimes the book is so long to the side that I have to start over again. And how sweet to consume those first pages again and again.

 

by

Christmas Splendor

Or rather, Christmas Eve Splendor. Taking a page from the Icelandic book of Christmas Eve, the night is made for the giving & getting of books, and an evening of reading. In such good company keeping, I opened the package that looked like books from the packages that arrived from my daughter. In all honesty, I promised to keep the packages wrapped until we could celebrate our Christmas together. And I cheated with just the right package and struck gold! One each for the four sign posts on one of the reading roads of the mind. So here we see the fiction area represented by the novel, then by the graphic novel. Next we see the powers of the mind, and then lastly, the mind of genius. Ah, sweet travels. Reports to follow at some point. For now, looking at them is enough.

 

by

A Little Magic

image-12-31-16-at-11-31-am  New Spider: This little darling is a newly discovered Eriovixia gryffindori which is named after something to do with the Harry Potter series. A sorting hat. As an aside, am I the only one in the world who has neither read the books nor seen a movie of the famous character? And aren’t spiders and bugs just marvelous? Spiders are part of my totem and they speak—whisper—secrets to me. This guy looks like a dried leaf and is most difficult to spot when he hides amongst them.

by

The Olds

AKA The New Olds—Stacey Kent

So it seems I might have a new category. Or at least a subcategory. Once again the lovely discovery of someone others have known for years. It this case, at least 30. Stacey Kent and the gift of the rabbit-hole seeker. Sometimes we don’t even recall where we started or the purpose of the original hunt. But we end (is there ever one? or is it only another stopping off place?]) with the jazz singer, the lovely chanteuse, or ‘the little French song.’

by

More on Jim Harrison

The content is from

I wrote about Jim and the friend who did some paintings for him. The article talks about one of them, the painting of a thicket on the wall (right, below). The artist is Jill Eggers.

25tltl-personal-spaces5-master1050

‘‘Jim liked naps,’’ says Joyce Harrington Bahle, who assisted the celebrated writer for 37 years — hence the bed in the small writing studio he kept behind his Montana home. On one wall hangs ‘‘A Correlated History of Earth,’’ charting the planet’s development over 4.5 billion years; on another, a painting, by Harrison’s friend Jill Eggers, of a thicket. Bahle says Harrison always saw thickets as places of refuge. Outside, looking out toward the Absaroka mountains, is the solitary bench where he liked to begin each workday.