Category: Time

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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L’internationale des rivières

— Camille de Toledo [Alexis Mital]. L’internationale des rivières. Un recit de l’avenir. With four illustrations from photos by the author. 231, [4], [3, ads] [1, imprint] pp. Verdier, [février 2026].

Once upon a time there was a river . . . .

L’internationale des rivières is a fairy tale of ecology and economics, a hybrid text of science fiction and law and the imagination. The title proclaims that L’internationale des rivières is an anthem of global relevance ; it is, as the subtitle suggests, “a tale of the future”, one that makes its own hybrid form : the memoir or day book of an elderly professor recalling, circa 2055, events that began two decades earlier. He is closely entwined with efforts to establish  legal personhood for a river, and what comes after :  “I was more than a sympathizer during these first years”.

Much like James Watson’s The Double Helix, the narrative of events unfolds as things happen (with occasional meanders), and this gives the work a surprising immediacy and tension not present in the dry recitation of facts. There is little dialogue, the tone is dry as the narrator chronicles his classroom lectures, the public debates and court proceedings, and the activities in the French parliament, with digressions to review contemporary objections and his own hesitations and concerns ; and yet the cumulative effect is fascinating. The unnamed elderly narrator, who might be Camille de Toledo (pseudonym of Alexis Mital), recounts the origins of the legal structures of the ecological movement, from Christopher Stone in California in 1972 to the constitution of Ecuador in 2008, to Colombia in 2016 and the  Te Awa Tupua case in New Zealand in 2017.

In 2035, a nationwide vote is held in France on a law to create legal standing for the river L ; despite all the efforts of the reactionary right to counter it, the loi Henriette  passes (the name is a nod to one of the book’s dedicatees and evidence that the author does not leave his collaborators as roadkill). This designation of a river as a non-human person with legal standing is merely the beginning : rivers and places in England and elsewhere have been given similar status.

Il arrive bien souvent que la pratique, la vie du droit anticipent la pensée. [It often happens that practice, the life of law, anticipates thought.]

L’internationale des rivières is a revolutionary book, for in the aftermath of the law of 2035, the trustees of the river, the “human voices”, bring an action to recognize the river L as a corps travailleur, a “working body” [or even, a working stiff], entitled to all the rights commensurate with that status.  “They invented a future for the law of 2035 instead of folding under the inertia of regulations”.

L’internationale des rivières is a legal thriller, not in the sense of courtroom drama, but in the sequence of judicial decisions and the formulation of contracts recognizing obligations and “retributions” (as the financial compensations paid to the river are designated). It is a thriller of the rule of law.

When the judge in the highest court in France confirms this status, a model is swiftly proposed to structure fractional compensation for the “work” of the river, a few mills here, a few fractions of percentages there, from each and all of the entities benefitting from the river : people, towns, farmers, hydroelectric dams, and so on, over the entire length of the river from source to delta. The trustees can dispose of these funds for the immediate benefit of the river — open space preservation, pollution remediation, and so on — or use them in solidarity with other ecosystems. Despite massive propaganda campaigns from the capitalist right and the “addict state”, despite the sluggishness of the appeal process and parliaments, the suit of the river L is successful.

Science fiction has long struggled with the question, what will replace capitalism ? L’internationale des rivières adapts the financial structures of extractive capitalism to force a new, post-capitalist economic model for the region and the planet, a “terrestrial political economy”.

Camille de Toledo is especially good at highlighting tensions between the popular basis of ecological actions and the (present) tendency of the state to favor private sector exploitation of natural resources. Page 75 includes a beautiful litany :

The designation of natural parks as sanctuaries,  the struggle against industrial fishing, the combat against the disasters of excess tourism, campaigns against the privatization of life, especially against the patenting process ; resistance to infrastructure projects : dams, power plants . . .

. . . and data centers, one might add. The text chronicles the economic pushback and the inevitable instances of corruption when selfish actors  inveigle themselves into an income stream ; but the thrust of the book is an account of a triumph over the utilitarian vision of classical economic theory. It is a fundamentally optimistic book. The book concludes with an interview of the narrator dated 30 November 2055, and two chronologies of the rights of nature. The first traces actual events, 1972-2025 ; and the second the chronology of  the future events in this book. L’internationale des rivières is the best, most interesting book I have read in years.  I have already started to give away copies to friends.

L’internationale des rivières is, as I wrote at the beginning, a fairy tale of ecology and economics. France is still a country of laws ; I am less certain about the willingness of economic actors outside the EU to recognize constraints upon their exploitation of people or ecosystems. This does not diminish the importance of this book as a call to “expand the perspective” and to see the world in new ways.

news & notes, late May & early June

news & notes

the view from the hammock

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— Michael Swanwick. Basil, Pepper, Salt, and Garlic Greens : A Year in a Witch’s Kitchen. Dragonstairs Press, 2026. Edition of 80.
A cheery mediaeval fantasy of “Auld Agnes” (twice a widow and not yet thirty) and celebration of the seasonal bounty of the land,  a novel in miniature that swiftly turns very dark.
——. Twenty-Three Reasons to Attend ICFA. Dragonstairs Press, 2026. Edition of 40.
A brief history of the convivial gathering that is the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, issued to mark the 47th iteration.

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IX XI. A documentary by Sean Wilsey.

I caught one of the screenings of IX XI in its premiere at the Tribeca film festival. I was impressed by the collage of small moments to tell a big story ; the events of 11 September 2001 in New York City are one of the defining events in my lifetime. The film is built upon interviews with a dozen people “from all walks of life”, including some fabulous cameos, and good archival moments. I especially dug the footage of skateboarding the plaza, and the art on the beach segments from earliest days of the World Trade Center. Director Sean Wilsey is a good listener. Roz Chast is every bit as compelling in her tales of parental anxiety as in her cartoons. The TV cameraman communicated his impulse to get right down there and interview people on the spot : the dread and the excitement are equally palpable. And his memory of waking the next day with concrete tears in the corners of his eyes was moving. There were even some laughs. In the Q&A after the film, Wilsey noted that his own account of his experiences on the day was the first to be cut. The interviews are recorded (without any prompts or questions) in a set that alludes to Yamazaki’s soaring façades and to rippling waters of memory and memorial pools. The film is limited to the days before and the day itself, no politics or exploration of aftermaths, an intention, and a choice, I can respect.

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current reading :

— M. John Harrison. Climbers [1989]. W&N Essentials, [2022, 7th printing].
Somehow I had never read this wonderful book. If one of the characters appears to suffer from “a kind of nostalgia, but for a place you’ve never been”, Harrison’s tricky prose reads like a memoir of events that never happened and it is no less true for that.

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— R. B. Russell. The Sanctuary and Other Strange Stories. Tartarus Press, [2026]. Pictorial boards, dust jacket, from a painting by the author.
Collection of 28 stories, written over a period of some two decades.
Am really looking forward to reading this.

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recent reading :

‘an inventory of silent nothings’
— (LAWRENCE, T. E.) Colin Sackett. The      . A Concordance. Uniformbooks, 2026. [Gift of MV].
Bibliographical concordance to the expurgations in the published edition of The Mint, A day-book of the R.A.F. Depot between August and December 1922 with later notes by 352087 A/c Ross (1955). T. E. Lawrence wrote an account of his time in the R.AF. and in March 1928 “he sent a clean copy of the revised text to Edward Garnett [who] had copies typed which were circulated to a small circle, among them Air Marshal Trenchard. Trenchard’s concerned response led Lawrenceto guarantee that it would not be published at least until 1950.” When Lawrence died following a motorcycle crash, his brother made arrangements with Doubleday, Doran, American publishers of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, to produce 50 copies of a copyright edition of The Mint in 1936 (O’Brien A166), ten copies of which were nominally for sale at the prohibitive price of $500,000 per copy. When The Mint was published in 1955, the censored content (“all objectionable words”) was not “conventionally redacted — by substituting asterisks, or emphatic black overprinting — but rather, made absent” :  as blank spaces. The vocabulary is rather limited and predictable : in his editorial note, Sackett helpfully provides an inventory. (In 1973 a definitive edition, edited with a preface by J. M. Wilson, and including the objectionable words and names as they appeared in the manuscript, was published by Cape).

— — —

— Richard K. Morgan. No Man’s Land. Del Rey,  [2026].
Violent collision of notions of Faerie with the dislocations in the aftermath of the first world war : memories of trench warfare, sexy witchcraft, and the Forest resurgent and threatening, in a hard-boiled detective mode, with mockery of the political and intelligence establishment (and the Order of the Golden Dawn). Relations between humans and “the Huldu” are largely gladiatorial in nature and the encounters are deftly choreographed. While Dunsany is named from the first page, and one of the book’s sectional epigrams cites Raymond Chandler (“It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in.”), the narrative tone is much more Mike Hammer or Carroll John Daly than Hammett or Chandler. An intense book.

— — —

— Charles E. Gould, J, Jnr. The Toad at Harrow. P. G. Wodehouse in Perspective. London: [Printed by the John Roberts Press for James H. Heineman], 1982.

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— An Englishman in New York. A Selection from the Library of Stephen C. Massey. Illustrated. 112 pp. (220 items). Peter Harrington, 2026.
An interesting and wide-ranging catalogue with numerous dedication copies and interesting rarities, such as Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) in rose muslin over boards (right at the dawn of modern cloth bookbinding), and a beautiful pair of Norwich textile sample books from the same period. As an auctioneer with Christie’s Mr. Massey sold a Gutenberg Bible in 1978 and the Codex Hammer of Leonardo da Vinci in 1994 (now known as the Codex Leicester).

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— Madly Singing in the Mountains. An Appreciation and Anthology of Arthur Waley. Edited with a preface by Ivan Morris. George Allen & Unwin, [1970]. Recollections of the great translator and poet Arthur Waley, whose A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918) is one of the great texts of English modernist poetry ; he also translated Japanese poetry, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, The Tale of Genji, The Poetry and Career of Li Po, and Monkey. With a miscellany of extracts from his other works.

If there is but a seed
On the face of the rock
A pine will grow ;
And shall not love worth calling love
Find always a way to meet ?

— — —

— John Blackburn. The Blue Octavo. Jonathan Cape, [1963].

— Colin Dexter. The Way through the Woods. Crown Publishers, [1992].

— Bernard J. Farmer. Death of a Bookseller [1956]. Poisoned Pen [in association with the British Library, 2023].

— Henry Wade. The Hanging Captain. Constable, [1932].

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news & notes : mid-May

on Hampstead Heath, May 2026

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This sign, suggestive of Arthur Machen, seen in the Museum Tavern.

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Blue plaque for Robert Aickman in Gower Street.
/ seen along the way but not shown : John Galsworthy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ottoline Mortell, D. H. Lawrence, Leigh Hunt, Constable, and others

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on Hampstead Heath, May 2026

In London for the Firsts antiquarian book fair at the Saatchi Gallery (14-17 May). Come say hello (Cummins booth A10).
https://www.firstslondon.com/

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bronze plaque for Andrew Marvell (1621-78), on a wall in Highgate

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current reading :

— Jean-Paul Sartre. Les Mots [1964]. Gallimard / Folio, [January 2026].

After the young Jean-Paul’s mother falls asleep while reading to him :

. . . c’était le livre qui parlait. Des phrases en sortaient qui me faisaient peur : c’étaient de vrais mille-pattes, elles grouillaient de syllabes et de lettres, étiraient leurs diphtongues, faisaient vibrer les doubles consonnes ; chantantes, nasales, coupées de pauses et de soupirs, riches en mots inconnus, elles s’enchan-taient d’elles-mêmes et de leurs méandres sans se soucier de moi : quelquefois elles disparaissaient avant que j’eusse pu les comprendre, d’autres fois j’avais compris d’avance et elles continuaient de rouler noblement vers leur fin sans me faire grâce d’une virgule.

/ file under : boys and their mothers

— — —

— Camille de Toledo. L’internationale des rivières. Un recit de l’avenir. Verdier, [février 2026].

 

 

current reading : late march / early april

 

BOOKBINDING & POLITICS
On the afternoon of Thursday 9 April I will be giving a talk at Oberlin College in connection with a program and workshop on bookbinding and politics at the library, We hold these Truths . . . to be Binding! Austin binder Jace Graf will be leading the workshop.  Information on the event can be found here :  https://oberlin.libcal.com/event/16363787
My talk is open to the public and is entitled Reading the Structure of the World : Bookbinding, Artificial Intelligence, and Life
I am looking forward to this, and to the idea of a bookbinding project that is not an all-consuming thrust to meet the deadline for an edition binding.
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recent reading :

— Larry McMurtry. Lonesome Dove. A Novel [1985]. Foreword by Taylor Sheridan. [2], 858 pp. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, [2025].

A spectacular book, every sentence and every chapter, from the Rio Grande up to the northern reaches of Montana. Engaging, devastating, even horrifying, and compelling at every level. This is a work of fiction so richly imagined that the reader walks, rides, listens, all the way. I cite a very few passages of interest :

“I ain’t a natural bachelor,” Augustus said. “There’s days when a little bit of talk with a female is worth any price. I figure the reason you don’t have much to say is that you probably never met a man who liked to hear a woman talk. Listening to women ain’t the fashion in this part of the country. But I expect you got a life story like everybody else. If you’d like to tell it, I’m the one that’d like to hear it.”

“The Earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight,” he added.

“Jake just mostly drifts. Any wind can blow him.”

“Ride with an outlaw, die with him.”

I though that slavery was the Matter of America, but McMurtry makes a pretty good case for the cattle drive and shoot-out and massacre as the vernacular Odyssey at the heart of the heart of the country.

(I read Lonesome Dove because David Streitfeld’s book Western Star sparked my curiosity.)

— — —

— John Masefield. ODTAA. A novel. William Heinemann, 1926. One of 275 copies signed by the author.
Picaresque account of a revolution in a tinpot Latin American dictatorship.  Prequel, of sorts, to Sard Harker (1924).
For an essay that will appear on Wormwoodiana.

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Michael Swanwick has published a brief, funny, and opinionated account of the New Wave in science fiction, The New Wave Explained

He followed with A Box Full of Controversy, a look at the origins of his 1986 essay A User’s Guide to the Postmoderns, Including the Battle for the Future, Unbridled Ambition, the Fate of the Children in the Starship, the Cyberpunk-Humanist Wars, Blood under the Banquet Tables, Metaphors Run Amok, and the Destruction of Atlantis !

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the Story Prize 2026

the winner of the 22nd annual Story Prize award is André Alexis, author of Other Worlds. Stories (FSG Originals. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2025).

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current reading :

— Marcel Proust. A la recherche du temps perdu. I. [Du côté de chez Swann. À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs]. NRF Gallimard, [2019]. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
/ I am back into it.

— The Supernatural Omnibus. Being a collection of Stories of Appraitions, Witchcraft, Werewolves, Diabolism, Necromancy, Satanism, Divination, Sorcery, Poetry. Voodoo, Possession, Occult Doom and Destiny. Edited, with an Introduction, by Montague Summers. Gollancz, 1931.

Metaphrasis

 

— William S. Wilson. Why I Don’t Write Like Franz Kafka. New York : The Ecco Press, [1977].

— —. Γιατι Δεν Γραφω Σαν Τον Φραντς Καφκα. Athens : Ekdoseis Apopeira, 1994. Translated by Sonia Salimpha, Stratos Kakadellēs. OCLC: 610587751 (Johns Hopkins).

William S. Wilson (1932–2016) was a friend for more than twenty-five years. I esteem his collection of stories and included it in my Grolier Club show for the beauty and clarity of his prose : and because several of the stories push at the boundaries of what we understand as science fiction in the same way that some of the work of Borges does.  “Desire” is a (quietly) spectacular example of what the short story can accomplish.

Bill was not a prolific writer. He published one novel, Birthplace, and a long stream of essays on art, literature, and philosophical topics. He was an exacting writer whose work demands of the reader the same rigor and sheer energy of attention with which he wrote and thought. And because of where and he lived in Chelsea, he knew everyone in the New York art scene of the Sixties and Seventies, not as a celebrity hanger-on but as an intelligent observer. There is a fascinating transcript of Jonathan D. Katz’s 2012 interviews with Bill at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

One sparkling memory from 1994 stands out among all our exchanges. I dropped in to visit him on 25th street and he said, I too have been published in Athens. He showed me a copy of his story collection, and all the history of philosophy was contained in his smile.

I remembered this some months ago, and now I have a copy of the book, thanks to a friend who set a family member on a quest through all the bookshops of Athens. It is locally scarce in the U.S., too. I don’t read Greek (ancient or modern) beyond the alphabet, but I am gratified to have this additional reminder of my friend Bill Wilson.

And this just on my desk : the 1528 Vier Bücher, Dürer’s four books on proportions of the human form.

commonplace book : late february & early march

current reading

— David Streitfeld. Western Star. The Life and Legends of Larry McMurtry. Mariner Books, [forthcoming March 2026].

Even the worst events in America, such as the slaughter of Native Americans, are soon repackaged as entertainment. [27]

There were, he calculated with the help of a detective he hired, at least five Larry McMurtrys operating throughout the Southwest and Mexico. [282]

Larry took the opposite approach. He never complained about any of those who appropriated the Lonesome Dove name for their ranch or saloon, much less sued them. He would tell interviewers that the story was an American version of the Arthurian legends. It overflowed single ownership and had been set loose in the national psyche. [295]

Western Star is an engaging book about an American writer — who once had a sweatshirt reading Minor Regional Novelist — and a fascinating study of obsession, book collecting, and the old ecosystems of the used and rare book trade.

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a title is not a book

— Michael Swanwick. The Universe Box. Tachyon, [2026].
This is another fabulous Swanwick collection ! “Starlight Express” and “Ghost Ships” are subtle ghost stories ; and “The Star-Bear” is a very tricky story to read in the centenary year of Lud-in-the-Mist and The Book of the Bear.
Swanwick must just light up with glee when he decides to take up a literary challenge : what chutzpah to write an interplanetary science fiction story with the title “The Warm Equations” ! And to pull off the critique unspoken but ever-present ! And that is barely scratching the surface of this box of delights.

In the first month of the Endless Bookshelf, a chance comment by a reader prompted me to observe that “a title is not a book” ; and this newest collection  from Tachyon prompts me to note (with glee) the occasional significance of the definite article ; and I can talk the talk, for I am one of the few to have a Universe Box and The Universe Box upon my shelf :

Wait. The cigar box you were carrying around contains the universe ?

The 2016 edition of Universe Box was issued by Dragonstairs Press in an edition of 13, in a cigar box containing the printed book, a shredded printout, celestial map, taxidermy eye, calling cards, and other secret treasures.

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The Library at Melmerby

https://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-telephone-box-library-guest-post-by.html

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Friends of the Library Sale

by Ernest Hilbert

‘The world still new, the journey not begun’

https://thesonneteer.substack.com/p/friends-of-the-library-sale

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a picture and short essay here at the weekly Shelfies edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin

https://shelfies.beehiiv.com/p/shelfies-78-henry-wessells

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[February]

not the first book fair

in San Francisco for the 57th California International Antiquarian Book Fair, 27 February through 1 March at the Cruise Terminal building, pier 27 on the Embarcadero. I will be in booth 117 (Cummins).
It would have been 1997, I think, that I first came to the book fair at the Brannan Center (long gone). Come say hello if you are here, and write if you would like a pass.

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California poppies

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meanwhile, back at the ranch

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recent reading

— Anthony Powell. The Military Philosophers [1968]. Fontana Books, [1971].
My favorite of the ‘Dance’ novels, a pleasure to re-read.

— Fletcher Pratt. The Blue Star [1953]. Introduction by Lin Carter. Ballantine Books, [1969].

 

re-reading in winter

commonplace book :

From Tatlin !  Six stories by Guy Davenport (1974) :

Our sense of the old is always modern. Starlight is hundreds of years old. We live in the phoenix time of antiquity.
[from “1830”]

Perhaps only in the awful light of the extraordinary was there real calm in human action. Nothing he might do was superfluous to the moment.
[from “The Airplanes at Brescia”]

an everlasting fire, dying and flaring up again
[from “Herakleitos”]

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recent reading :

— Naoto Fukasawa and Jasper Morrison. Super Normal. Sensations of the Ordinary [2007]. Lars Müller Publishers, [2024].
Fascinating exhibition of objects from daily life, Tokyo and London 2006 ; Trienniale di Milano 2007.

— Anthony Powell. At Lady Molly’s [1957] and The Kindly Ones [1962].
I picked up At Lady Molly’s and was drawn in, and then on to another . . . An earlier reader of the copy of The Kindly Ones has noted a few passages  : not always ones I might have marked, but I like these :

Moreland could never get used to the fact that most people — in this case, Templer — lead lives in which the arts play no part whatsoever. That is perhaps an exaggeration of Moreland’s attitude. All the same, he always found difficulty in accustoming himself to complete aesthetic indifference.

It was like trying to shake hands with Ophelia while she was strewing flowers.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

I have read the complete cycle, out of sequence, and several of the novels more than once or twice ; with the Dance I don’t think it matters whether or not one reads the books in any particular order, for Powell’s prose moves across time within each book and sometimes within a single paragraph, always with such clarity that there is  no doubt (indirection and obliqueness, yes : muddiness, no). Once one has the work as a whole in one’s head, the characters and incidents and phrases play out in memory and recreation. My favorite remains The Military Philosophers, with At Lady Molly’s close on its heels.
The most interesting parts of Hilary Spurling’s Invitation were the indices of literary or musical references and places, to tease out subtle allusions that slipped by unnoticed ;  the index of persons with biographical summaries and concordance of appearances gives a doleful feeling : a litany of all the facts with none of the pleasure of the text.

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nineteen years of the Endless Bookshelf

Friends,

today marks nineteen years of the Endless Bookshelf website. It was sunny and bitterly cold outside (the rhododendron leaves were tightly rolled) : a good day to be indoors with a book. I looked into Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica (sixth ed., 1672), and dug around in the chapters on the basilisk, bears, mermaids, dolphins, wolves, the phoenix (some of these I can see as touchstones for Avram Davidson). A pleasure to taste again Browne’s leisurely examination of delusions and sloppy thinking.

I have never been what they call a numbers driven person, so I don’t know what sort of “traffic” the ’shelf attracts (the newsletter list hovers around six hundred, and some recipients anyway may read theirs). But I do see occasional remarks or notes from readers, and on this occasion I reprint one which arrived by post last week :

I saw your post “Very Few Letters” and figured that was a good prompt for me to write you this short note.
There is no other site or place on ye olde internet that has provided me with as much continued enjoyment as the Endless Bookshelf. I continually return to the archives to discover new books or authors, and to read your good words.
My TBR pile/list always grows and I always somehow feel better after a visit. Weird, I know, but thought that a letter expressing my thanks might be welcomed.

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Comments arrive at the Endless Bookshelf in many forms : a reader from California has just sent more than two dozen Seville oranges (pronounced in Shakespeare’s day as “civil as an orange” as Much Ado about Nothing reminds us). These will soon be transmuted into marmalade.

I will be in San Francisco at the end of February for the California International Antiquarian Book Fair, 27 February through 1 March at the Cruise Terminal building on the Embarcadero. I will be in booth 117 (Cummins). Say hello if you are there, and write if you would like a pass.

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‘Lolly Willowes’ at 100

I wrote a centenary celebration of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman for Wormwoodiana (published earlier this week) :

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2026/01/sylvia-townsend-warners-lolly-willowes.html

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recent reading

— Howard Waldrop. Masters of Science Fiction. Introduction by Paul Di Filippo. 1048 pp. Centipede Press, [2026]. Edition of 500 copies signed by Paul Di Filippo. Just began reading this giant compendium of stories from 1972 to 2005 : many familiar tales and some I haven’t seen before.

— [Charlotte Adams]. Jean Grolier [1884]. [Grolier Club, 2025]. Re-issue of an essay on collector Jean Grolier (1476-1565) from the earliest days of the club, designed by Jerry Kelly and the first use of his new Grolier typeface, based on the earliest roman and italic type cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldus Manutius. The colophon serves as a type specimen (though it does not show the tiny flourishes or extenders which also echo the early type forms).

— Tom La Farge. The Crimson Bears. Part One. A Hundred Doors. Part Two. Tough Poets Press, [2025]. I pulled the new edition from the shelf, started reading, and just kept going on from there. (I re-read the original edition last summer.) What a playful, sophisticated book.

— Ngaio Marsh. Artists in Crime [1938]. Penguin Books, [1957].

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Thank you to all the readers. As always, send me your news or tell me about books I have overlooked.

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A singular interview with Gregory Feeley

Gregory Feeley is author of The Oxygen Barons (1990), Kentauros (2010), and many novellas and short stories published in magazines or anthologies, including “Aweary of the Sun” (1994) ; “The Weighing of Ayre” in Starlight 1 (1996) ; “Fancy Bread” (2005) ; and “The Unpastured Sea” (2023). His work often engages incidents of cultural and technological change. We have known each other for many years through our shared interest in the writings of Avram Davidson. In 2005 I published his short novel of coffee and ideas in early seventeenth-century Venice, Arabian Wine. A recent work,  Th’Erratic Stars (2022) is an extract from his novel « Hamlet the Magician ».

Henry Wessells : Allusions to Shakespeare and his writings run deep throughout your work, including several novellas and your novel Hamlet the Magician. Can you point to a specific line or passage in the Plays and say, “It all started here” ?

Gregory Feeley : I think it must have been sometime around the age of 10 or 11, when I first saw a production of Macbeth and heard Macbeth declare that “Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, / While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.” I recognized “Night’s Black Agents” as the title of a collection by Fritz Leiber (I was at that time much better read in science fiction than in Shakespeare) and immediately Got It : you could take an especially good phrase from Shakespeare — or anyone else — and appropriate it for a story title ! This seemed such a wonderful thing that when I began reading what Terry Southern called Quality Lit a few years later and noticed how common the practice was, I knew that I could do this myself if I liked.
Macbeth has been heavily picked over, and I suspect I got the last good one. But I notice that Hamlet still has (at least) one left, and am surprised that no one has nabbed “A Crafty Madness”. It’s available for whoever wants it.