Takeshi Sudo

— Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)

“the true beloveds of this world are in their lover’s eyes lilac opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child’s Sunday, lost voices, one’s favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.”

“I am only a transparent diagram, of manners and
Private words with the certainty of being about to fall.”

— John Ashbery, CLEPSYDRA

#AshberyWednesday

“The one whose story you read is more yourself than you are.”

(“Celui dont vous lisez l’histoire est plus vous-même que vous-même.”)

— Pascal Quignard, Mourir de penser

— Richard Powers, The Gold Bug Variations

#MelvilleMonday

‘ Franklin's favorite take on companionship came from Melville. While survival might force one into bedfellowship with a Queequeg or two, "truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.” ’

“I find myself thinking of the imperceptible beat in which a word exists, between the articulation and the hearing.”

— Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost in the Throat

#sundaysentence

Grace Paley, The Art of Fiction No. 131 “One of the first things I tell my classes is, If you want to write, keep a low overhead.”

“If you want to write, keep a low overhead.” —Grace Paley

“Every man thinks he’s in possession of the precise melody,
but melody isn’t the result of a problem
of quantities
but rather the result of a gnawing problem of the soul.”

—— Gonçalo M. Tavares, A Voyage to India (tr. Rhett McNeil) DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS

An enormous congratulations to longtime Dalkey Archive Press author Gonçalo M. Tavares, WINNER of the 2026 Formentor Prize for Literature!

Chesapeake views in late February and early April Audiovisual views of the Chesapeake Bay: Winter light on a late February morning/evening and April wind and clouds on a late afternoon.

Audiovisual views from the Chesapeake Bay a few years back

vimeo.com/547235109

“He paid huge attention to details, which at times threatened to take over the story line. Carried away, he made his recent life come across like Moby-Dick, at least with regard to the love interest.”

— Richard Powers, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

#MelvilleMonday 🐳

“I must plunge, from the edge of a moment right into its midst, and onward, from one wave to the next, just like some Moby-Dick, or a dying butterfly between two flower petals”

— Krasznahorkai László, Chasing Homer (tr. John Batki)

#MelvilleMonday 🐳

The Deserters | The Booker Prizes A mesmerising and inventive novel that lays bare the devastations of war on the most intimate aspects of our lives

thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-l...

“He sets off, once his reluctant feet are wrapped in the wretched green spongy knit, still wet, in the direction of destiny, North, for chaos and oblivion must be named.”

— Mathias Énard, The Deserters
(tr. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social)

#sundaysentence

“It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.”

— William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5-5

#OperationEpicFury

No trace of turning fingers marks the pages, no wear at the margins — they lie there still, as untouched as if the years had forgotten them.

Great idea!

I have no more than fifteen LOA volumes to my name, yet I am drawn to them—their weight, their patient pages, the sense that they gather whole seasons of a life between their covers. (here I tried Faulkneresque approach 😆)

At a secondhand bookstore I passed on a whim, I found two LOA volumes of Faulkner at a bargain. One of those lucky days.

ポール・オースター『Baumgartner』の「14」に関するメモ

“ポール・オースター『Baumgartner』の「14」に関するメモ”を投稿しました。
artssoy.blogspot.com/2026/02/baum...

— Pascal Quignard, ABYSSES (tr. Chris Turner)

“To live and walk in Rome was a violently moving experience each time I stayed there. The intense co-presence of all the elements of distinct periods, even when set side by side, forms a strange, scattered unity—a unity that involves no rivalries, that is heterogeneous, calming.”

Announcing our Autumn 2026 Catalogue: fitzcarraldoeditions.com/app/uploads/...

Suspended Passion : Interviews by Marguerite Duras | Seagull Books The interviews that make up the book were conducted in 1987, when Italian journalist Leopoldina Pallotta della Torre met the 73-year-old Duras at her Paris flat and convinced her to sit for a series o...

“The sea fascinates and terrifies me. I’ve been horrified since childhood by the idea of being swept away by water. But the real sea is the North Sea. And only Melville in Moby Dick has put its terrible threatening power into words.”

Duras, Suspended Passion (Tr. Chris Turner)

#MelvilleMonday 🐳

“a noisy old Métro car with metallic wheels screeching along the iron rails and the lovely doors of varnished wood with the silver handles that had to be pushed up by the knob for the doors to spring open.”

— Paul Auster, Baumgartner
#sundaysentence

“We often derive much profit from reading a book in a different way from that which its author intended but only (once childhood is over) if we know that we are doing so.”

—— W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays

me too!

I think those rubbery covers are online POD only. Especially Amazon. An industry production shift...

私は遲刻する。世の中の鐘が鳴つてしまつたあとで、私は到著する。私は旣に負傷してゐる。⋯⋯

——菱山修三　詩集『定本懸崖・荒地』（昭和17年、青磁社）