"As personal as ever!"

...so says Leland de la Durantaye, of this common misspelling of yrs truly's name! (I am straining my eyes a bit but this looks to be a PD sighting at the Harvard Book Store...a "staff recommendation"...Heyyy, I'll take it!)



In other "Ed Parks" news, someone recently wrote a really sweet (I mean that in an "awww!" sense and also a kind of frat-boy "suh-weet" sense) review of PD on Amazon, concluding: "Well done, Mr. Parks. I hope this is the first of many novels for you!"

Again: Heyyy, I'll take it!

Nabokov Monday

The Economist reports that Nina Khrushcheva (Nikita's granddaughter) has published a book on VN....(Via Maud)

And Dizzyhead Leland talks about The Original of Laura—to burn, or not to burn?—with Brian Boyd and Ron Rosenbaum...on Australian radio!

Tulip Hysteria Coordinating

Leland de la Durantaye in Cabinet on a famous urinal:

When Pierre Pinoncelli walked into a white room in Nîmes in 1993, he knew he was not in the bathroom; he knew the urinal in front of him was marked as Duchamp�s Fountain, and he also knew it was not the Fountain refused by the Independents in 1917. Pinoncelli was not only a seed merchant; he was also an artist. He revered Duchamp and his reverence fueled his disappointment with Duchamp's decision to replicate the original readymade. For him, in reissuing and reproducing Fountain—in merchandising and franchising it—Duchamp had betrayed it. Feeling that the punishment should fit the crime, Pinoncelli took matters into his own hands. He peed into the false idol, and before the guards could overpower him, he produced a small hammer from his pocket and gave the urinal a single sound whack.

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Tuesday, September 25—how is it the last week of September?!

Friend Leland sends in this new bit of one-word poetry, "Lion-eating poet in the stone den," to give "Buffalo buffalo..." a run for its money...New Psychic Envelopes activity—no, not the mega-single "Berlin Wall," but a double cover of Team Knucklehead and some unknown band out of Liverpool!...Finally saw Once, and I concur with Atkinson and the Termites—loved this movie! Termite Matt points out that a version of "Falling Slowly" that stars Glen Hansard (of the Frames) and Marketa Irglova played on The Tonight Show "doesn't have the same heat, the same exhilarating release of energy as the version in Once." The song gets embedded in your head—I was humming it as I walked home—and I think part of the reason is the very canny way it's presented in the film: We watch and listen as Hansard teaches the song to Irglova (they are nameless in the movie), at the back of the music store where she sometimes goes to practice piano; he sings out the parts for her before he starts playing the song proper, and this makes our encounter with the song as fresh as hers (as theirs, really, since this is the first time they've played it together)—we're learning it at the same time...Once opens on Hansard playing Van Morrison's "And the Healing Has Begun"; here's footage of him singing VM's "Astral Weeks"...Dizzyhead L. muses on post-apocalyptic lit—and film—and TV—and music...Dizzyhead Thomas has a blog..."Things I Learned in 2002," a short prose piece by Dizzyhead/Psychic E. chanteuse Sarah is the basis for this terrific short film...She looks Asian!...I have a Dizzyhead meme/contest in the works...STAY TUNED...

Against the Ray

The first run of the 1994 London Everyman Press edition of Lolita replaced John Ray Jr.'s foreword with one from Martin Amis. —Leland de la Durantaye, Style Is Matter

Unrelated question: Did the author John Wray (né Henderson) choose his surname as a tribute to "John Ray"? (Or Fay Wray? Or both?)

I like how Leland's name resembles that of Paul Delalande (a philosophical writer of VN's invention).

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Tuesday

Friend Leland de la Durantaye's book on Nabokov, Style Is Matter, is out—am excited to get my hands on this....check out the photo on his homepage...Why did he put eggs on his eyes?...Matthew Sharpe reads from Jamestown....This looks like it'll be a fun read: Joyce Carol Oates on this year's The Raw Shark Texts and Remainder, Sebald's Austerlitz (2001), and the Lethem-edited Vintage Book of Amnesia (which came out ages ago)....Speaking of Lethem, has anyone noted how his name invokes Lethe, the river in Greek mythology whose waters cause forgetfulness? I can't remember [rim shot!] if I've seen that anywhere before. [Or no wait, put the rim shot here.]...Also: Dizzyhead Matt goes Kwik-E-Mart krazy!