Gatsby Stuff, HuffPo, & Sal Bass
Posted by David Duhr in 
— The “Gatsby house,” a mansion on Long Island which supposedly provided the inspiration for Daisy’s house in The Great Gatsby, has been torn down. That L. A. Times piece has some interesting photos, but do yourself a favor and look at all 48 pics (mostly of the interior of the house) on this slideshow. Just beautiful. And a little sad, huh? Somehow I find myself nostalgic about a place I never even visited.
(The article says that the estate will be divided into five lots for “custom homes.” Really? Because in this country, the smarter money would be on one or two custom homes, a 7-Eleven, a Duane Reade, an IHOP, and an access road to a Target, inside of which is one of those Taco Bell/Pizza Hut/KFC walk-ups where you always have the chance to hear someone say, with a straight face, “Yeah, gimme a bucket of wings, gimme a large Meat Lover’s, uh, gimme a six-pack of gorditas, and I want a extra-large Coke, but make sure it comes from the Taco Bell dispenser thingie, because y’all’s syrup is sweeter.”)
The Gatsby house brings to mind this book, which is also way cool.
And then check out this abandoned home in Belgium (courtesy of The Rumpus).
Okay, abandoned-homes-photo-jag over.
— Salman Rushdie (Sal Bass, when in hiding) is placing books in a New York hotel’s rooms so that guests, according to the piece, “will not have to resort to copies of the Gideon Bible” during the PEN New Voices Festival. Titles include Leaves of Grass, Beloved, Gatsby, and The Sound and the Fury.
I’m not sure which I enjoy more: the fact that Rushdie is doing this, or the implication in the article that the Bible is a reader’s last resort. Probably both equally.
— At Emerson I took a poetry seminar with Bill Knott. He’s this really crotchety dude who does not hesitate to make his students feel like idiots (especially when they’re talking like little idiots). He’s the kind of professor who makes students cry. In short, I loved him.
Someone earlier this week pointed out that he has a blog. And it is all kinds of awesome. Add it to your blogroll (or whatever).
It may have been HTMLGiant who linked to the blog, as yesterday morning Kyle Minor wrote this open letter to Knott.
— Speaking of HTMLGiant, here’s a quite good piece about self-publishing.
— I’m sure you’ve heard about this, but a blogger is suing HuffPo/AOL on behalf of all of their unpaid bloggers. This isn’t the most cut & dry of cases, but I wish him/them well.
— Why not submit some of your writing to the Journal of Universal Rejection?
— And this one goes out to our favorite British Colombian WriteByNighter: “When Reading Twilight is Acceptable.” Brilliant.
That’s it for this week, I guess. Enjoy your weekend. Go to a reading or two. Turn off the GD TV.