The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune, by Alexander Stille This is a very readable book, and what follows isn’t so much a review as a reflection prompted by it. The sordid shocking story it tells – of the Sullivanian therapy cult that operated in Manhattan from the 1950s until … Read more
Lots of great doors in Norwich including the wonderful ladies lavs in the Castle. (I expect the gents is just as good.) Work on the Cathedral began the year 1096 and but the chapel dedicated St Catherine of Alexandria is a later 14th-century addition. This beautiful etched glass door to the chapel is by Sally … Read more
A blog post mentioned a Esther Chilton prompt, so I took a look. Here was the very short story challenge from November 27th: Tell a story in 54 words using the following words somewhere in it: HUSKY, ACNE, SPACEMAN, WHEELBARROW, LETTUCE. Here was my contribution: The spaceman, his skin scarred by acne and dehydration, pulled … Read more
Biographical details about Barbara Shermund’s life are sparse, but Caitlin McGurk makes the most of what little is known. Her book Tell me A story Where the Bad Girl Wins: the Life and Art of Barbara Shermund includes a lavish selection of Shermund’s cartoons and artwork, reproduced in generous, glorious abundance. Shermund drew some cracking … Read more
I like to follow a trail. This one began with a doorway and took me to Paris décollage, Zohran Mamdani, cupcakes, dumplings, and taxis via 1920 fashion with a few odd detours along the way. It started with a photo of an empty storefront I’d taken for no particular reason: 2814 Broadway, August 2025 on … Read more
I’ve been reading Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund It’s a biography and art collection by Caitlin McGurk celebrating the pioneering cartoonist Barbara Shermund who drew for The New Yorker and Esquire. More on that anon. Here’s a seasonal cartoon from Barbara Shermund from 1958 … Read more
This magnificent red door is Engine Company No.47’s firehouse on West 113th Street between Amsterdam and Broadway in Manhattan. It’s often a sight on the daily neighborhood stroll. The following is from the Landmarks Preservation Commission Report June 17, 1997, “Building Description Engine Company No. 47 is a 25-foot wide, three-story brick and brownstone structure, … Read more
A city stroll east across north end of Central Park and the Harlem Meer in brisk and windy November weather. Still lots of color in New York City parks. Destination: The Museum of the City of New York on 5th Avenue and specifically the Richard Rauschenberg exhibit. Looking south across Harlem Meer Looking west across … Read more
I read a review of a “The Folded Clock: 100 Number Poems” that made this poetry collection peculiar enough to be intriguing. I recommend the review as a great introduction. The author is Gerhard Rühm, an author, composer and visual artist; he’s regarded as one of the key figures in the postwar European (neo)avant-garde, and … Read more
I started on a shelf-clearing exercise which – of course – was doomed from the get-go. I mean – if you are sorting through books, it’s guaranteed that you will very quickly find something that you must immediately sit down and read. The culprit in this particular case was a novella I’ve read twice before … Read more
When I think of the Durrell family, it’s Gerald who comes to mind as the one with the sense of humour. Back in my teaching days, the scene with the mother scorpion in the matchbox who launches herself at brother Larry (see sidebar) was always a surefire hit and led to all kinds of lively … Read more
Where Not there, on the tight bend of the paved highway, where cars are occasionally prone to skidding, chiefly in winter, though no one dies there, not there where streets are greener and leafier where lawns are mowed and there’s a dog in the garden and the head of the family gets home late at … Read more
My first book for the #1925Club was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes where Anita Loos makes several sly, satirical references to the journalist, critic and public intellectual H. L. Mencken. He is unmistakably the model for one of her characters and a source of some of the book’s humor. Mencken admired Loos’s wit and he was one of … Read more
Karel Čapek’s Letters from England (1925) “’You must begin from the beginning,’ I was advised, but as I have now been for ten days on this Babel of an island the beginning has got lost. What am I to begin with? Fried bacon, or the Exhibition at Wembley? Mr. Shaw, or the London policemen?” That … Read more
Here are two poems by H.D. neither of which were written in 1925 but both of which were included in her Collected Poems of that year. Storm You crash over the trees, you crack the live branch— the branch is white, the green crushed, each leaf is rent like split wood. You burden the trees … Read more