identifying marks

LI has wanted to get rid of the picture of himself here since he put it up - but in the interest of being identifiable in the dark corner of a bar in Alphabet City, we let it hang around on this blog.

Well, yesterday's meeting was more of a success in terms of translators than of readers of LI - one reader, Mr. NYP, did show up, bearing a delicious tartine like confection baked to honor Vermin Direct. Alas, Mr. Scruggs couldn't make it. Our far flung correspondent, Mr. T, was there, and he pointed out that LI's riff on Coriolanus - hey, we are a literary bunch! - was not necessarily necessary. An old friend of mine, Lorin, who hadn't read my blog, nonetheless said that he believed I was well on my way to becoming a backwards Jesus - but Lorin has always expected me to eventually follow the narrative track of the protagonist in Wise Blood. When I do, he wants to get rights for the made for TV movie. Natasha Wimmer, who just translated Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives - the best novel I've read this year, which is coming out this spring, when all people of good will will be buying it - was there, and an editor at Publishers Weekly, Michael Scharf, and a filmmaker friend of mine, James Carmen, who, after the crowd broke up, told me some Bela Tarr stories - turns out he knew Tarr in Berlin, and Tarr eventually denounced him for having no taste. There you are - not quite Page Six, or whatever the fuck that page is in the Post, b-but so sue me.

I am trying to store memories of the cold to take back to Austin. Sunday, Mr. T. and I went to the Met to see the Neue Sachlichkeit exhibit - and it shamed me. I need to be much more savage about this country. It also gave me some ideas for my graphic novel. I was planning on going to Church street, where Tom Paine, in the greatest pain, warded off the ambitions of young preachers eager to convert the old reprobate and died unrepentent, but I probably won't have time - I hope his spirit forgives me.