recent reading :
— Mark Valentine. The Prospero Machine and other stories. Tartarus Press, [2026].
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pictures from an exhibition :
— 50 Shades of Modern. Exhibition at the Houghton Library, Harvard, through 8 January 2027. Curated by Leslie Morris.
Seeking to provoke both “wow, what an amazing object” and “wow, I didn’t know Houghton collected stuff like that,” 50 Shades of Modern showcases just a few of the thousands of acquisitions Houghton’s Modern Books and Manuscripts Department has made over the past 20 years. Dating from 1800 to the present, these items show the continuities of institutional collecting ; initiatives supporting new directions in teaching and research ; and the generosity of the many donors who have helped make the collection what it is.
This is a good small exhibition, eight display cases of considerable density and wall mounts of some choice visuals (original and reproductions). The range of materials is fascinating, from the Gothic mode of fiction and the creole poetry of Mauritius and the first novels by African Americans to the archives of Gore Vidal and Elizabeth Wurtzel (author of Prozac Nation) and the original autograph manuscript of Histoire d’O (!) and a sharp artefact of the German counterculture. The exhibition labels are succinct and well written and suggest connections across time and space.