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John Crowley Memorial : Tuesday 1 December 2026

John Crowley Memorial Gathering in Boston on Tuesday 1 December 2026
 
On behalf of the John Crowley Literary Trust, I am pleased to announce that there will be a memorial gathering to celebrate the life and writings of John Crowley (1942-2026), on Tuesday 1 December from 6:00 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. in Rabb Hall at the Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116. Further details will announced shortly.
The event will be open to the public, and the space is fully accessible.
RSVPs are requested, please send a note to : wessells [at] panix [dot] com

Gimme Danger : Unspeakable Things by Elizabeth Hand

Gimme Danger

— Elizabeth Hand. Unspeakable Things. A Novel. Little Brown, [2026].

Unspeakable Things is a brisk, perilous walk along one of those unstable cliffs in Cornwall where the events of the novel unfold. Olivia is just eighteen and something of a tomboy living in a decaying manor where her exiled, widowed father plans a return to the West End with a production of The Tempest. She feels the first storms of her appetite for life and artistic creation ; and also the first promptings of desire when she meets a girl from the neighboring village out on the moor. Liz Hand plays with the tropes of the Gothic mode at all stages from the eighteenth-century origins to the Brontës to Rebecca and the mass-market paperback Modern Gothic. I suspect that Hand has read the essay by Joanna Russ, “Someone’s Trying to Kill Me and I Think It’s My Husband : The Modern Gothic”.

The world of the Twenties is deftly invoked: the social upheaval and glamor, the music and fashions, the contrasts of wealth and poverty. Some boundaries have blurred in the aftermath of the War, but there is an awareness that the privileged class still operates according to laws of its own. In her Author’s Note, Hand indicates some of the histories of the interwar period she mined for the novel, which has a great epigram from Lytton Strachey : “I saw these marvelous people, they were utterly beautiful, but they had feathers where brains should be.” The long house party at Ledges, hosted by the fabulously wealthy Gabriel William Vincent (“Rex”) De Voil, is well choreographed and well catered, and all the feather-brained members of society display their multicolored plumage. The name dropping is fun.

In several novels (The Lat Houseparty, A Summer in the Twenties, and Hindsight), Peter Dickinson summons dark aspects of that Jazz Age world just before he was born. In Death’s Darkest Face, Julian Symons wrote of the life and disappearance of a poet in the Thirties ; the life of his schoolboy protagonist is altered by those events. These excellent novels, however, are retrospective narrations. The hurtling, kinetic energy and atmosphere of menace of Unspeakable Things are experienced in real time. Olivia learns how the world works. She learns quickly and well.

Unspeakable Things is an excellent, transgressive book. Go read it.

October commonplace book

My next book, forthcoming from Suntup Press (Fall ’27), is a new edition of two classic novellas by Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan & The White People, with an original essay as afterword. The book will be printed letterpress to the high standards of Suntup Press with original new illustrations, stone lithographs by Wales-based artist Flora McLachlan. The afterword will also include a reproduction of the original frontispiece by Machen’s friend Herbert Jones, intended for 1894 edition but never used by John Lane.  This is exciting news, the book will be beautiful !

The book will be available for pre-order from 17 October

https://suntup.press/the-great-god-pan-the-white-people/

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I have been enjoying Now Voyager, a new illustrated journal presenting international topics and some unusual perspectives, already in its fourth issue https://www.nowvoyager.com

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And it’s October, which means that Michael Swanwick is scattering the leaves of another dark tale, Autumn’s End, at his website

http://floggingbabel.blogspot.com/2026/10/autumns-end-part-1-of-31.html

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recent reading :

— Christopher Morley. Parnassus on Wheels. Garden City, New York : Doubleday, Page, 1917.
A whimsical classic of the used book trade, a tale of itinerant bookseller Mr. Mifflin and his horse-drawn bookshop, and how the sister of a distinguished author makes a snap decision to leave the farm and go on the open road as a bookseller. (There is a whisper of that brief chapter in The Wind in the Willows where, between boating and motor cars, Mr. Toad takes up a canary yellow horse caravan.) With a practical demonstration of the bookseller’s cost code system, with purchase prices in cents ! A nostalgic picture of a vanished world.

Endless Bookshelf tee shirt

A new Endless Bookshelf tee shirt, black ink on white 100 percent cotton, locally screen printed in New Jersey, with the fabulous design by John Coulthart. The Endless Bookshelf appears across the shoulders on the back.

Available sizes: Small (S), Women’s Tank top Small (TTS), Medium (M), Women’s Tank top Medium (TTM), Large (L), and Extra Large (XL).
The advance price is $26 ($30 for XL) and includes postage in U.S.A. (overseas, please inquire).

https://temporary-culture.com/product/endless-bookshelf-tee-shirt/#310926

PRE-ORDER PRICE THROUGH 29 OCTOBER, INCLUDES POSTAGE IN U.S.A.

Available November 2026. The regular price will be $33 (XL $37).

 

How I spent my summer vacation / 2026

I. A few postcards from my recent trip to Geneva with the A.I.B.

— H.B. de Saussure, Cyanomètre, ca. 1788. Bibliothèque de Genève.

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A glimpse of the Villa Diodati, on the other side of the fence from the Parc Byron, Cologny (Geneva in the distance).

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Gérard de Nerval. Autograph manuscript poem, [Fantaisie], after 1842. The last quatrain. [Private collection.]

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The approach to the Château d’Oron.

Some of the library shelves at the Château d’Oron : a large room filled with late eighteenth-century popular literature and other books, all in impeccable original condition.

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The original book-fool.

Von buechern hab ich grossen hort
Verstand doch drynn gar wenig wort

— Sebastian Brant. Das Narrenschiff. Basel, 1494. Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire, Fribourg.

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Glimpses from the exhibition, Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse. Enquête su un roman-monde, curated by François Rosset [at the Fondation Jan Michalski, Montricher, through mid-February, 2027].

— Jan Potocki. Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse. St. Petersburg, 1805. One of three surviving copies of the first printing (the first decameron of the book).

— Jan Potocki. Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse. Manuscript page (from the version of 1810).

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H.B. de Saussure, Voyages, dans les, Alpes, 1779. Plate VIII, the view from the summit of the glacier. [Private collection.]

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Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire, Lausanne. [The library of the twenty-first century, still under construction.]

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Inscribed

— Ernst Jünger. Auf den Marmorklippen. Inscribed to Martin Bodmer, 25 September 1939. Fondation Martin Bodmer. [Snapshot under minimal light.]

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precocious children

La Musicienne, Musée d’art et d’histoire, Neuchâtel. One of three surviving programmable automata constructed by Pierre Jaquet-Droz and his son between 1768 and 1774. These were exhibited at the Spanish court and elsewhere in Europe as sales tools for the firm’s watches and clocks. The museum curator who maintains and operates stands behind l’Écrivain (the writer). The uncanny valley starts here.

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One the great delights of the trip was to see the original autograph manuscripts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Reveries du promeneur solitaire in the Rosseau archives at the Bibliothèque de Neuchâtel, together with some of his autograph notes written on playing cards. Not one of my pictures, however, is in proper focus. Alas.

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II. The earlier part of my vacation was spent in an undisclosed location, writing, and walking.

the view from the desk

the view from one morning’s walk.

My nearest neighbors were a family of grey foxes : a vixen and at least four kits, and sometimes the dog-fox, too  (I could never get everyone into a single frame).

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early october – mailbag & commonplace book

early october mailbag at the Endless Bookshelf

— Ingrid Burrington. Networks of New York. An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure. 2026 Edition. [vi], 136, [2] pp. [Brooklyn : printed in Minneapolis by Shapco Printing, for the author, 2026].
The 2016 edition was the Endless Bookshelf best book of the year, praised for challenging the reader to see the familiar anew and providing the necessary tools. “Urban internet infrastructure has metastasized over the past decade and here are the tools for observation, diagnosis, and resistance.

— Chad Oness. A Private Matter. Ten Essays by C. Mikal Oness. Text printed in blue and black. [Photographs and afterword by Griffin Gonzalez]. [Portland] : Manually printed and bound at No Reply, 2026. Edition of 130 copies on Arches Johannot and Zerkall Ingres papers. Cloth spine, patterned paper boards.
“printing books by hand is not all fun and games”

Perhaps not, but this book is a delight to hold in the hand and I look forward to reading the text.

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Michael Swanwick, master of concision and the unexpected turn, is scattering the leaves of another autumnal tale all the month of October, “Autumn’s End”. It’s worth taking a walk in the woods with him.

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Photographer Henry Wessel at the Grolier Club

Jack Gray’s exhibition of books and original prints by American photographer Henry Wessel (1941-2018) is on view at the Grolier Club in New York City, through 14 November.
(above : San Francisco, 1993 ; incongruous detail)

N.B. : no relation.

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a few steps away

part of a very fresh sulfur shelf, from this morning’s walk

 

recent reading :

 

‘But ruin is particular, tragedy local.’
— Larry McMurtry. Sacagawea’s Nickname. Essays on the American West. New York Review Books, [2001].
These essays are great stuff : facts, attitudes, opinions, clearly stated. The closing paragraphs of “The West without Chili” are deft and funny and true. {For some reason I kept seeing the title as Sacagawea’s Necklace.]
— —. Roads. Driving America’s great Highways. Simon & Schuster [2000].
Exhausting, though McMurtry reaches a fascinating space at the end of the book.

recent reading : early september

current reading :

— R. B. Russell. Bibliomancy and Other Essays. Illustrated. [xii], 369 pp. Tartarus Press, [2026].
Collection of essays and reminiscences about books and writers and collecting, including Arthur Machen, Robert Aickman, the Sarban papers, on publishing the first edition of a work by Charlotte Brontë, and Barry Humphries.

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—Mark Behm. The Eye of the Beholder. The Queen of the Night. The Ice Maiden. Zomba Books, [1983]. A Black Box Thriller.
The Ice Maiden is an inventive twist on the vampire novel, enacting a hilarious collision of Old World tropes (and the Anne Rice novels) with the exigencies of the American economic system. Gangsters, vampires, religious fanatics, history infodumps, and greed ! The Zomba Black Box books were good stuff in the early 1980s revival of American noir : I had several (Jim Thompson, Horace McCoy, Fredric Brown, and Cornell Woolrich), but hadn’t seen the Marc Behm collection until now. The first two novels were published in 1980 and 1977 ; this is the first (and perhaps only) publication of The Ice Maiden. The proofreading and copy editing are sloppy, but the action never lets up.

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recent reading :

— Larry McMurtry. Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. Reflections at Sixty and Beyond. Simon and Schuster, [1999].

But the problem with reading lists, even one as intelligent as Cyril Connolly’s The Modern Movement, is that they are all in a sense dead letters, guides for the unadventurous, those without the time or the ambition to hunt around and make discoveries for themselves. The great readers will always know about books that neither the marketplace nor the academy has got around to.

McMurtry, novelist and screenwriter whose writing career was sustained by his other life as book scout and antiquarian bookman, here expresses ever so clearly the unvoiced contempt some booksellers have for their customers. In 1999, McMurtry opened Booked Up in Archer City, Texas. It was his book town, a contrarian and rearguard enterprise in defiance of the internet that endured for several years. I have few regrets, but one of them is that I never made it to Archer City, or to the auction when the books were dispersed. This is the punchiest of his memoirs.

——. Books. A Memoir. Simon and Schuster, [2008].
——. Literary Life. A Second Memoir. Simon and Schuster, [2009].
——. Hollywood. A Third Memoir. Simon and Schuster, [2010].

These three entertaining memoirs cover some of the same ground as the earlier book, in chapters short enough to be aphorisms, and there is some inevitable tangling when the lines of his life refuse to conform with categories (and some repetition). McMurtry’s forebears were cattle ranchers ; his clear-eyed recognition of himself as a rancher of words and books is an excellent metaphor.

— J. I. M. Stewart. My Aunt Christina and other stories. Gollancz, 1983.
Collection of stories, several with academic settings, by scholar and author Stewart, whose highly accomplished Appleby novels appeared under his pseudonym Michael Innes. “The Doctor’s Son” is savage about academic politics; and “Variations on a Theme of Oscar Wilde’s” considers a painter whose works capture events in the future.

— George Sims. The Terrible Door. The Bodley Head, [1964].
An engaging novel of death and the antiquarian bookseller, with plot devices suggestive of the trade in Baron Corvo. The death is an antiquarian bookseller run down by a motorcycle in suspicious circumstances ; his inventory (some letters he once owned) is, for a time, the plot engine. Sims was a very good writer.

—Robert Jackson Bennett. The Tainted Cup. Shadow of the Leviathan : Book 1 [2024]. Del Rey paperback.
An eccentric genius criminal investigator in a fantasy world of Imperial hierarchies and body modifications : the murder has ramifications into the corridors of power.

the Endless Bookshelf, graphic by John Coulthart

The Endless Bookshelf, image copyright 2026 by John Coulthart

Artist John Coulthart produced the new header illustration for the Endless Bookshelf ; it was commissioned with with pretty free instructions, and I am dizzy and delighted with the Borgesian Penrose triangle of shelves. I first encountered Coulthard’s work in The Starry Wisdom, a tribute to H. P. Lovecraft (1994), an anthology edited by D. M. Mitchell, which assembled a variety of work : “The Sound of a Door Opening” by Don Webb (who roped me in), my own story “From This Swamp”, and pieces by William Burroughs, J. G. Ballard Ramsey Campbell, and others. The tour de force of the book is The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft, illustrated by John Coulthart in 32 infinitely detailed pages. His website is https://johncoulthart.com/.

Opening page of the Call of Cthulhu illustrated by John Coulthart
Opening page of The Call of Cthulhu, illustrated by John Coulthart

John Crowley

 

In Memoriam : John Crowley
1 December 1942 – 8 August 2026

John Crowley was a great writer, one whose work I prize above most other writers. I first knew and esteemed Crowley through his work, as with Borges and Avram Davidson (neither of whom I ever met), but the subculture of science fiction is permeable, so before long we met in person and became friends. (Peter Straub was the other magician writer I was lucky enough to get to know.) Our paths, it turned out, had many meeting points. I remember more than one Readercon where John and I were both wearing seersucker.

John Crowley, signing books in Conway, Mass., late March 2018 [Photo by MJ Duffy].
When John was agentless and somewhere in the morasse of writing Endless Things, Temporary Culture proposed decent terms to publish a small edition ; he declined graciously, reminding me that he sought a wider readership than I could achieve. Some years later, as Small Beer Press was getting ready to publish Endless Things in the spring of 2007, Gavin Grant commissioned a special binding of six copies for author and publisher and friends. It was a pleasure to oblige (and thus participate in the book) ; I designed and executed two further hand bookbinding projects for Crowley titles published by Small Beer, the Chemical Wedding and And Go Like This.

Some of the hand bound copies of And Go Like This on the bindery table (Small Beer Press, 2019).

John was very generous to me : he accepted my invitation to participate in the Critical Fiction panel to celebrate the publication of Wendy Walker’s My Man and Other Critical Fictions (2011), and the event went well. John was funny, a smart reader whose essays and conversation demonstrated his wide reading and ability to make interesting connections. It was curious that he was for a time so resistant to the notion of the critical fiction ; yet when he grasped the concept, he saw the playfulness and deep roots of the mode.
[A recording of the symposium here : http://criticalfiction.net/wordpress/?p=209 .]

John contributed a nimble preface to A Conversation larger than the Universe (2018). His “Hatful of Adjectives for Henry Wessells” contains one of the trickiest sentences he ever composed :

. . . he holds (though lightly) the idea that a literature of impossibilities can be a revealing mirror of actualities. Hamlet says that playing (into which we can enfold “fiction” in a sense Shakespeare didn’t use) holds a mirror up to nature; but of course the image in the mirror (as C. L. Dodgson never tired of pointing out) is always reversed.

Read that again : Alice and Hamlet and mirrors in a single sentence.

The sage came down from the mountain top (or, anyway, from the Utopian Berkshire village of Conway) to the Big Apple for the SF Symposium I organized in connection with the Grolier Club exhibition in early March 2018. John joined Christopher Brown, Siobhan Carroll, Ellen Datlow, Samuel R. Delany, and Maria Headley. It was a good panel and a fun conversation at dinner afterwards.
[Link to the Grolier Club video here : https://vimeo.com/259778546 .]

In his essay on re-reading, William Hazlitt talks of certain books as “links in the chain of our conscious being. They bind together the different scattered divisions of our personal identity. They are land-marks and guides in our journey through life” : this very much applies to my re-readings of Little, Big. John did not merely write Little, Big. The four volumes of Ægypt (over a twenty-year period), The Deep, Engine Summer, The Translator, Ka, and his short stories and essays form a substantial and enduring body of work. The John Crowley papers are held at HRC in Austin (Manuscript Collection MS-01003).

John was a modest, even humble person. One afternoon in the spring of 2018 I got a call from him, saying he was in town to go to an awards banquet, would I like to come to the reception (he couldn’t get me in to the gala dinner). I met him at his hotel. As we walked down to the much grander hotel, talking of many things along the way, he told me, “it’s a story set in a library. There’s no chance I’ll win but the publisher asked me to be present, so here I am”: that evening the Mystery Writers of America presented the Edgar award for best short story to “Spring Break” by John Crowley.

Some years ago John and I were asked to be a panelist at an event in Boston organized to identify One Hundred Famous Massachusetts Books (there are a great many of them). At the last minute, John couldn’t make it. Only a couple of people showed up, so we panelists had a great conversation and came up with a good preliminary list. My friend David Godine was there. And so was Matt Tannenbaum, of the Bookstore in Lenox, Mass. We both agreed that Little, Big ranked high on the list : his was the shop where forty-five years ago today a publication party was held for Little, Big by John Crowley (see below).

John Crowley was a kind man and a wonderful writer. We are all fortunate that he wrote his books.

detail from an invitation, 1981
Detail from the invitation to Little, Big Day (15 August 1981).