Emily M. Danforth's Blog, page 26

Daniel Gray and Kathleen Starrie - An igloo constructed out of...

Daniel Gray and Kathleen Starrie - An igloo constructed out of milk cartons filled with colored water and frozen 

"A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It’s also an influence in the way you see..."

““A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It’s also an influence in the way you see everything—in the way you feel your life.””

- Thom Gunn (via theparisreview)

vintageanchorbooks:Monsters of Modern Literature Trading...

vintageanchorbooks:

Monsters of Modern Literature Trading Cards? Yes, please.

"I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the..."

““I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first.””

- Grace Paley (via theparisreview)

fer1972:Paintings by Carmelo Blandino

fer1972:

Paintings by Carmelo Blandino

"Betrayal between women is the backstory to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959),..."

“Betrayal between women is the backstory to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959), considered by many the best ghost story of the twentieth century. The house’s spinster mistress, we learn, “took a girl from the village to live from her, as a kind of companion,” but died neglected while the girl was dallying in the garden with a man. Inheriting the house brought the girl no happiness because of accusations that that she had tricked her doting benefactor, so she killed herself. Hill House is already throbbing with lesbian unhappiness, then, by the time an investigator brings along a group of psychic sensitives. It is no surprise that the ensuing psychodrama focuses on the turbulent relationship of two of the sensitives, timid Eleanor and cocky Theo (Theodora).Theo has arrived fresh from a row with the “flatmate” who ripped up “the volume of Alfred de Musset” Theo gave her for her birthday—no doubt a wink-wink reference to the murderous tribade in Musset’s Gamiani (1833). One of the book’s scariest moments comes when Eleanor and Theo are gripping each other’s hands in the dark, listening to ghosts babble outside the door—but when the lights come back on, Eleanor realizes she is alone. “Good God—whose hand was I holding?” Desire and revulsion, the live and the dead, touch here to produce a delicious shudder; what if the true monster is not outside but right beside you, pretending to be your friend?”

-

Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue (reviewed at The Lesbrary).

(via fuckyeahlesbianliterature)

"There is a tacit contempt for those whose experience and beliefs don’t fit in to the modern world as..."

“

There is a tacit contempt for those whose experience and beliefs don’t fit in to the modern world as neatly as they ought to. And that includes not just people of the past, but people of other cultures who haven’t embraced western modernity, either because of material privation or because of cultural resistance.

It is an odd belief, that somehow we know more about reality and that therefore we realise there is no spiritual dimension to reality – because, what? Because we have functioning capitalist societies that are only occasionally on the verge of complete collapse? Or because we understand the molecular architecture of cells better?

”

- David Bentley Hart (via michaelrobbinspoet)

"I’ve got death inside me. It’s just a question of whether or not I can outlive it."

“I’ve got death inside me. It’s just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.”

- Don DeLillo, White Noise (via likeafieldmouse)

artchipel:Curator’s Monday 128 Guy Billout (b.1941,...

artchipel:

Curator’s Monday 128

Guy Billout (b.1941, France)

Guy Billout is a French artist and illustrator. He finished his art training in the French city of Beaune. Afterwards he worked in advertising for a few years before moving to New York City in 1969. It was there he found success when he was published in New York Magazine. Billout’s aesthetic style is clean and spare, sometimes incorporating some ironic element. His work has been featured in several notable magazines and renowned books. Our sincere thanks to AnaBloom for this Curator’s Monday.

[more Guy Billout | Curator’s Monday with AnaBloom]

"But the thing about horror is that, even if you find gross-out flicks “gratuitous” or distasteful..."

“But the thing about horror is that, even if you find gross-out flicks “gratuitous” or distasteful (oh so many food metaphors!), the very concept of horror almost obviates that criticism. What happens to the accusation of “gratuitous” when applied to a form that, by definition, seek push and reorganize boundaries? It’s exactly what seems excessive that makes horror so deliciously ambivalent, as well as so difficult to dismiss. And who knows what gets snuck in or communicated in — to use Phil’s metaphor — those messy wads of repulsion.”

- Jane Hu waxes poetic about the hydra-headed genre of horror, from Alfred Hitchcock Presents to American Horror Story. Read the rest here, on our new LARB blog (via lareviewofbooks)