The Printed Whim

04/14/2014

“Be patient that I address you in a poem,
there is no other
fit medium.
The mind
lives there. It is uncertain,
can trick us and leave us
agonized. […]
The mind is the cause of our distress
but of it we can build anew” (199)

-William Carlos Williams

04/11/2014

"But what about young people in general who are Facebooking and Tindering all day and can't concentrate on anything more than a soundbite?"

Steven Poole: Lengthy pieces of writing are increasingly found on the very internet that pessimists blame for turning us into skim readers

03/19/2014

We are on hiatus until summer time, but we are still here.

03/19/2014

02/25/2014

"judging literary quality is hopelessly subjective."

Do Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace qualify, and if not, why not?

02/20/2014

5 Books that Will Help You Sound Smart at Cocktail Parties20 Feb '14Culture, LifestyleIt seems as though reading is on the decline and, if you read most things online, it’ll seem like intelligent conversation is on the decline, too. But what if you want to sound bold and sophisticated, like “the mos...

02/20/2014

Los Angeles has been home to many indie bookstores throughout the years, but with the struggling economy and the rise of e-commerce sites like eBay and Amazon - not to mention the growing popularity of e-readers - some of the best independent bookstores have closed down, such as Cliff's Books...

02/19/2014

Gregor Weichbrodt's On the Road for 17527 Miles traces Beat classic's progress in precise geographical details

02/05/2014

Happy 100th!

Monday night at the Central Library author Barry Miles and I discussed the life and work of William S. Burroughs , whose 100th birthday is on Wednesday. Burroughs, of course, was one of the great iconoclasts of 20th century literature: progenitor of the Beat generation, titular godfather of punk.

01/29/2014

After its eventful start, Barry Miles’s biography “Call Me Burroughs” (Twelve) becomes rather like an odyssey by subway in the confines of William S. Burroughs’s self-absorption, with connecting stops in New York, where he lived, in the late nineteen-seventies, on the Bowery, in the locker room of a...

01/24/2014

"Before you hear this poem, you must complete these small tasks..."