sontag. psychic soulmates. penguins. and such.

Flynn: I read this morning that Bette Midler’s husband bought her the entire Penguin Classics series. That’s adorable. I have a real soft spot for her cause she’s just so brassy and sassy but self-aware and, you know, Beaches.

Me: I’m with you on Bette. Also, she’s top heavy. And I like those sort of birds.

Flynn.

Me: I’m reading (or rereading) 100 books in the new year. One of my resolutions. Everything on my shelves as well. Even the fluff. I’ve put Sontag’s journals down.

Flynn: HOLY SHIT BUFFY, I got on the computer an hour ago and decided to buy the journals today. You are my psychic soulmate.

We really need shot for not updating this. Circa December 2000.

Flynn: Perhaps we should try to dig up works by authors who are championed, if quietly, but are seldom discussed or not terribly popular. Who have we not heard of that we should have? Oh! Barbara Pym. I managed, by luck, to come into a pile of books that had been left in the office of one of my former professors – an eccentric Yalie genius named XXXXX without whose Literary Theory class I would have been grossly unprepared for grad school – who died while on sabbatical in New York city last summer. Anyhow, there were several Barbara Pym books and I’ve been staring at them on my shelf, wondering about her, the spines being lovely and intriguing.

Me: Have you seen the gorgeous hard backs Penguin are selling? Not sure if you can get them in America though.

Flynn: Maybe we should focus on Penguin? Penguin classics??? Holy shit, and may I just say that the covers of the Penguin editions of Graham Greene are gorgeous. And on the Penguin guy’s alphabet list, Pym is his ‘P’ and he mentions that someone once declared her the most underrated writer of the 20th century.…I’m stealing Nella Larsen from him too.

Still Flynn

Flynn: Getting back to these “unknown to me/us” writers. Let’s start a list of these? Barbara Pym, Raymond Carver. Who was that Italian-American who used to write about growing up in California? Dammit. Can’t remember his name…. John Fante, that’s it. Shirley Jackson, Paula Fox.

Flynn: Also, I love you. This is fun.