that had to hurt.

[verbminx]

Anthropodermic bibliopegy. That's books bound in human skin, for the unaware. Interesting article from Harvard Law School's newspaper, The Record. Reminded me instantly of a movie, both beautiful and disgusting, but I won't tell you which one; you'll know if you've seen it and it's a major spoiler if you haven't. (Hint: calligraphy.)

The good news is that apparently Ilse Koch, the Bitch/Beast of Buchenwald, probably did not have a lampshade made of human skin, as previously believed. (What she did have is bad enough, and there are disturbing pics at those links. Fair warning. The Koch family's reign at Buchenwald was considered bad even by Nazi standards.)

And, I'm trying to read The Crying of Lot 49. About halfway through. "The Courier's Tragedy" is brilliant and hilarious. I've never read Pynchon (!) but have been meaning to because of a commentary on Mason & Dixon in, um, must have been Michael Dirda's Bound to Please. I am late on this bus, but you know, while everyone else was reading that, I was tracking down OOP Angela Carter... way before all the U.S. rereleases....

/snob

Here is a fun Lot 49 Site at Pomona College.

Now, I must, at some point, drag myself out into the cold to go to the library.

Comments

[lil-octopie.livejournal.com]

i haven't read lot49, but i enjoyed gravity's rainbow. and V. also.

unfortunately that didn't help me one bit in trying to trudge through mason & dixon. i reallyreally wanted to read it, but it was just an impossibility... every few pages I'd fall asleep. kind of like stephenson's quicksilver haha...

movie in question was too asia-phile for me :9 kinda turned me off the director.

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

When I took a film class in college, the instructor hated that director. I really liked said director at the time, and I still think he's capable of creating beautiful images. But when I was into his stuff, I was really into extreme things... not like "Faces of Death" movies, but emotional-taboo-breaking and emotional violence; extremes of cruelty but not gore. I totally get what you're saying about the "asiaphile" aspect of said movie... there IS something fetishistic about it.

I liked Quicksilver and finally got the whole series, but I think I quit reading the first about two years ago just after the pirate battle. I loved it to death but I didn't want to wait for the sequels, so I read Snow Crash instead. Now I have all of them and Cryptonomicon, and plan to devote at least a few weeks to them all probably sometime next year.

I will probably read either V or GR next.

[audesapere.livejournal.com]

there IS something fetishistic about it.

you mean like culture & imperialism / postcolonialist perspectives thereof a la Said (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679750541/104-2573749-8063100?v=glance&n=283155&v=glance) ?