Tag Archives: style

Never Too Many Books

Posted on November 21, 2025 by JMN

… Peter-Ayers Tarantino[’s aesthetic] recalls that of maximalist bibliophiles of centuries past, including Marcel Proust and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was formed during a life on the road. In the Abstract Expressionism section, Tarantino extracts, almost without looking, a thick … Continue reading →

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And One More Thing…

Posted on November 17, 2025 by JMN

I adore compression and spareness, and Infinite Jest, finished at 7:29PM on 11-16-25, is bloated and prolix. It tells you something that it’s a novel with footnotes. Hundreds of them. During the periods when I ground my teeth, it tracked … Continue reading →

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Rooms That Photograph Like Paintings

Posted on October 31, 2025 by JMN

“I’m going to hesitate and say it’s settled into what it’s meant to be.” (Martyn Thompson) I was taken with the handmade rooms in Martyn Thompson’s Sydney, Australia home. They’re atmospherically profiled in the photographs. Each shot has a painterly … Continue reading →

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Untie These Hidebound Eyes, Unbind These Hogtied Hands

Posted on July 12, 2025 by JMN

Jason Farago-rhymes-with-Chicago writes a deep, reflective appreciation of Cézanne’s work, calling Cézanne the first painter he ever loved.  BC*: For six centuries, ever since some scientifically minded Florentines had developed rules of perspective that made art look more like life, … Continue reading →

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‘His Technique Can Be Potently Slapdash’

Posted on May 31, 2025 by JMN

If the images in the survey feel more like news than comment, that’s partly because we can sense the press photos Shahn used as his sources. Though his paintings themselves aren’t close to photorealistic — his technique can be potently … Continue reading →

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Reading ‘Reading Ulysses in Montana’ in Texas

Posted on May 15, 2025 by JMN

Delving Yardbarker is the nom de guerre of the creator of “Reading Ulysses in Montana.” As with Luvgood Carp, it gives me pleasure each time I say “Delving Yardbarker.” Sonorous, compressed, quirky, inventive, mischievous, literate, subversive, diverting, intriguing, outrageous, prolific, … Continue reading →

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An Unbosoming: On Cohesion

Posted on April 6, 2025 by JMN

Wehr lists anatomical English equivalents for Arabic noun ṣadr, plural ṣudūr, as: chest, bust, breast, bosom. (Heart is an outlier, clearly metaphorical.) At a tender age I heard my grandmother refer to ladies’ “bosoms.” Context nudged me to associate “bosom” … Continue reading →

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‘the living can / be silenced the dead cannot’

Posted on April 3, 2025 by JMN

The writer who wrote the line in my title is ire’ne lara silva. Here it is in context: … they will make us all into virginmadonnas protecting mexicanidadbut our redred blood spilt on the ground does not knowhow to be … Continue reading →

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I Need Some Writer’s Block

Posted on March 26, 2025 by JMN

Really, I should draw, paint and read more, write less. It’s a constant struggle to pipe down.  Poetry, for one thing, triggers me. Intending to read a bait of versifying, before I know it I’m a keyboard Roman candle ejaculating … Continue reading →

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Did Someone Mention Drugstore Cowboys?

Posted on March 20, 2025 by JMN

The Lone Ranger rides again! That was my first take on the photo. Then it stirred my childish you-haven’t-earned-your-Stetson attitude. I was sure the article would nudge me toward curdled cowboy hat bête noire-ism. But wait: As he cavorted across the … Continue reading →

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