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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

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).

recent reading : late july

recent reading :

— Ian Penman. Erik Satie Three Piece Suite. Semiotext(e), [2025].
Fascinating ! Formally innovative or even bonkers, and what a delight to read !

— Miranda Seymour. l used to live here once. The haunted life of Jean Rhys. W. W. Norton, [2022].

— Joe Brainard. Bolinas Journal 1971. Big Sky, 1971.
— —. Selected Writings. Kulchur Foundation, [1971].

— On the Mesa. An Anthology of Bolinas Writings. Edited by Joel Weishaus. City Lights Books, [1971]. Cover photograph by Steven Lazar.
Work by Robert Creeley, Joanne Kyger, Tom Clark, Bill Bergson, John Thorpe, Lewis Warsh,  and others. Drawings by Gordon Baldwin and Arthur Okamura.

— The World of Donald Evans.  Text by Willy Eisenhart. Another Harlin Quist Book, [1980].

— Patricia Highsmith. Those Who Walk Away [1967]. Atlantic Monthly Press, [1988].

Bolinas Reads : Jon Brunner

BOLINAS READS

Jon Brunner interviewed by Jane Silvia

Portrait by Van Waring

[Reprinted, with permission, from the Bolinas Hearsay News for Friday 10 May 2019.]

portrait of John Brunner by Van Waring

 

My name is Jon. I came to Bolinas in ’72. Many people know me as Bru. I grew up in upstate NY where my family had a truck farm. I had 24 ducks and they all knew their names.

What are you reading now? What’s in your pile of books ? Do you read one book at a time or

I’m always reading a few books at once, usually a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. I read widely, depending on how I feel. Right now l am reading the following books :

Mama’s Last Hug : Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves (F. B. M. de Waal)

Words in Air : The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (Elizabeth Bishop)

Pasta for Nightingales : A 17th-Century Handbook of Bird-Care and Folklore (Giovanni Pietro Olina et al.)

Cooking in Iran : Regional Recipes & Kitchen Secrets (Najmieh Batmanglij)

For fiction, I’m reading The White Book (Han Kang)

I’m also reading a collection of new young queer fiction. I want to know how kids are dealing with it today and to pay attention to what’s going on. I’m currently reading We the Animals (Justin Torres) a fabulous coming of age book. Also, a collection called Lot : Stories (Bryan Washington) which I found out about after reading a story that was published in the New Yorker. That’s how I got interested in it.

Do you like to read paper or ebooks ? Audio books ?

Paper, I exclusively read paper. Why ? It’s a book ! I love and adore books, always have and always will. Once on a plane, the steward came up and said, omg, you read books, most people have devices.

Are you a browser in the library or do you know in advance what you are looking for ? If so, how do you find out about them ?

I mostly know what I am looking for and I read reviews in the New York Times, New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books. When I am in the library I like to browse the new non-fiction and the 7-day books.

Do you have a favorite genre or any genres you never read ?

I could spend the rest of my life reading cookbooks and have a large collection at home.

I also like reading travel books. One of the best ones I have read is Sliced Iguana : Travels in Mexico by Isabella Tree.

Genres I never read : science fiction and fantasy.

What was your reading experience like as a child ? Did you grow up with a lot of books? Do you remember any favorites ?

I liked books by W. H. Hudson. But what really impressed me at an early age was a cookbook for children which I can’t remember the name of. But, both of my parents loved to cook. I made a recipe from the book called shrimp wiggle, sort of like a lobster newburg. That got me started reading and cooking as well and I still like to cook.

I never liked comic books, actually, I hated them. But I read everything else, even the back of cereal boxes.

Did you go to the library as a child ?

We always went once a week on Saturdays. I grew up in the country in upstate New York on a farm. The library was four miles away in the nearest town, attached to the town hall in the main square. The librarian has always been my friend and would often suggest books that I might like. It would really get me reading more.

Were there any books that made a big impression on you earlier in your life ?

Two books that were influential for me were The Blue Nile and The White Nile (Alan Moorehead) about the discovery of the Nile. In 1964 I went to Ethiopia and it prompted me to read more about travel adventure, plant discovery, and where water comes from.

What books might we be surprised to find on your shelf ?

Keep the River on Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum. He lived in the jungle with tribe of headhunters and studied queer primitive cultures.

The Bible, one of the world’s wonderful books.

Do you have a collection of books? Are there any favorites that you go back to?

I always recommend to everyone Verlyn Klinkenborg, a naturalist, gardener, and author of The Rural Life.

Another book I like to recommend that is a favorite is Green Thoughts : a Writer in the Garden by Eleanor Perenyi. Very snarky, truly wonderful.

David Fairchild is another author I always go back to. He traveled the world for the U.S.D.A. (Department of Agriculture) in the ’30s and ’40s looking for fruits and vegetable that could flourish here. Some of his books are : The World Grows round my Door, The World was My Garden, and Exploring for Plants.

My grandfather’s organic gardening book by J. I. Rodale, How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method.

And of course, the cookbook collection.

What’s the last book you recommended ?

Green Thoughts by E. Perenyi.

Is there a famous author that you ever wanted to meet ? If you could invite some authors to a dinner party who would you chose?

I would like to have a dinner party with Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bishop. It would be really interesting to hear them converse after a few glasses of wine. Both Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bishop are wonderful writers. In particular, most people don’t get Jean Rhys. I’m not sure how widely read she is but she was both inspiring and tragic.

What do you plan to read next ?

On Trails : An Exploration by Robert Moore.

Is there any book that you have always meant to read but still haven’t ? Any highly rated books that you thought were over rated ?

I should have read Proust ; everybody’s bugaboo.

Do you ever re-read ? Books you return to ?

I always go back to reading Beckett. Love Beckett. And of course, Elizabeth Bishop

Are there characters in fiction that draw you in as a reader ?

I’m not thinking of specific characters but the writers who create them and draw me in. Colm Toibin is one of them.

When and where do you like to read ? Describe you ideal reading experience.

Always and all over. I have several comfy reading spots in the house but my favorite one is sitting up in bed with a beer, Birdy, the parrot on my shoulder ; ideally reading a good recommended book.

I like a book that talks to you: Jungian literature on the puer, (eternal boy) as a way of trying to understand myself. Getting older gives me more time to look back and allows me to remember more than I thought l could.

Why read

Why not ? Reading is the best, it nourishes the mind, body, creativity, and spirituality and of course, knowledge.

recent reading : early july 2026

recent reading :

‘I know the sadness but the cause know not’
— Hopkins, Gerard Manley. A Vision of the Mermaids. A prize poem dated Christmas 1862 [. . .] and now for the first time printed in full. [Oxford: Oxford University Press], 1929. Decorated boards, one of 250 copies. [Gift of MLM].
Finely printed facsimile of Hopkins’ manuscript.
/ file under : what song the sirens sang

‘Art has the tendency to materialize metaphors’ — Bruno Schulz
— Jerzy Ficowski. Regions of the Great Heresy. Bruno Schulz. A Biographical Portrait. Translated and edited by Theodosia Robinson. W. W. Norton, [2002].
“No metamorphosis appears as a deus ex machina, as an abrupt and inexplicable decree of some unknown power as in the case of Kafka’s student, Gregor Samsa. In Schulz’s fiction every change is a consequence of some inner tension that has reached its culmination. At that point, a new quality emerges and new dynamics are revealed.”

— W. Somerset Maugham. Cakes and Ale or the Skeleton in the Cupboard. William Heinemann, [1930].
His most malicious and, also, his funniest book, memorable for the portraits of Driffield, grand old man of letters (Thomas Hardy), and the rising writer-on-the-make Alroy Kear (Hugh Walpole). Maugham wrote, “The book I like best is Cakes and Ale. It was an amusing book to write”.
In The Book Blinders, John Clute notes that the dust jacket flap copy identifies the narrator of the novel as Ashenden, evocative of Maugham’s key spy novel Ashenden (1928), although only on page 81 does the narrator identify himself, with a hint at autobiographical elements. “Master Willie” articulates a profound distaste for Victorian hypocrisies, which also seems to signal roots in autobiography.

— Tana French. The Keeper. Viking, [2026].

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Howard A. Rodman is author of two novels , Destiny Express (1990) and The Great Eastern (2019), a distinguished screenwriter, and an old friend whom I have known since his first book appeared. The novels have been released in paperback by Rare Bird Books of Los Angeles. Howard came to New York City for a conversation with Robert Polito on Wednesday evening 8 July, at the Coffee House Club in the Salmagundi. The room was packed, the conversation was witty and candid, and it was a delight to find other friends in the audience.

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This year marked the centenary of Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. I regret that I will not be attending Readercon this year, where this afternoon (10 July) a panel discussed the work : 100 Years of Lud-in-the-Mist , with Casella Brookins, Graham Sleight, Greer Gilman, Lila Garrott (moderator), Sonya Taaffe, and The joey Zone.

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Your correspondent will be away next week, offline in a pleasant place, doing some work on the work-in-progress, and perhaps going for a walk in the woods.

[updated 16 July : from an  undisclosed location]

 

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