I made cassoulet this week. The creation of cassoulet, the regional peasant dish of southwestern France is not something to be undertaken lightly. Most recipes recommend a two-day composition period. It is said that Anatole France’s favorite version tasted as if it had been cooking for twenty years—which I’m not so sure is a good thing. Cassoulet includes five kinds of meat, white beans, and a sauce rich in tomatoes, onion, garlic, and herbs. A duck and a pork shoulder are roasted; lamb, salt pork, and sausage are browned. (This is not a dish for vegetarians.) Then the whole thing … Continue reading Cassoulet

Greetings to the blog world. I (Janis Londraville) am the co-author of THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN IN THE WORLD: PAUL SWAN, FROM WILDE TO WARHOL and am happy to entertain comments and questions about the book or Paul Swan, the man or the movie. Additionally, I am beginning work on the biography of American artist Jon Corbino, called A MAN MADE MAD BY PAINTING: JON CORBINO, FROM RUBENS TO RINGLING. (More than one critic focused on Corbino’s ability to draw the perfect horse, posterior highlighted.) Anyone having information about him, please feel free to get in touch with me. Continue reading Most Beautiful Man in the World

Speaking to the Rose by Robert Walser "Middleton translates to perfection both the text and the spirit. . . . Walser’s central themes of self-effacement, the primacy of the imagination, the liberating aim of creative play are richly displayed in the new volume. You’ll find both the Walser deadpan . . . and his pratfall. Walser’s lightness is lighter than light, buoyant up to and beyond belief, terrifyingly light. . . . At times, he seems closer to writers like the French poet Francis Ponge than to his ‘weightier’ peers such as Musil, Broch, or Mann. Both Ponge and Walser, … Continue reading

Twilight of the Long-ball Gods: Dispatches From the Disappearing Heart of Baseball by John Schulian “For baseball fans, John Schulian’s Twilight of the Long-Ball Gods is the perfect antidote to winter. Schulian does something remarkable in this book: He brings to life an all-but-lost world of semipro teams and American Legion ball, of old Negro leagues and the Class D minors. . . . Schulian can flat-out write. Boxing and baseball have, by far, produced our best sports prose, and Schulian crafts sentences with the best of American journalists. Quotidian struggles here become the stuff of literature because American mythology, … Continue reading Praise for Twilight of the Long-ball Gods

The Usual Mistakes by Erin Flanagan “If this second release to the fledgling ‘Flyover Fiction‘ series is typical, one can safely predict that the series will be among the most significant in American letters. Flanagan writes with some of the same penetrating insights into the human condition that one finds in the work of Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Tennessee Williams. . . . Flanagan has a remarkable ability to penetrate the real people behind the facades they present to an often-judgemental public. This first collection augurs well for Flanagan’s future. Hers is a singular talent. This book belongs … Continue reading