Triple Canopy excerpts artist David Wojnarowicz’s journals: “May 7th spent the afternoon developing photos—most in the Rimbaud series—others from the ‘shoot-from-hip’ series—excited about them, they’re fine images semi-ghostly bald men in leather eating in restaurants faces whirling with darkness reflected in opposite mirrors… four o’clock rolls around—½ hour till the meeting—I finished up in the darkroom I rent on Prince Street from some old walrus ex-ship captain fella who has tons of shots of Mexico on the studio walls. A real grumpy fart. Paid him his fee and split to a nearby Cafeteria for some coffee and a cigarette—spread photos out—selected best printed ones and then headed on over to the B’WAY offices.”
Bottom-basement pricing on Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet has resulted in quarterly losses for the company. But this is probably good news in the long run, the Observer explains: “at $200 cheaper than the iPad, even if Amazon’s profits are marginal because of the sunken price, they’re selling what essentially amounts to a license to buy more stuff from Amazon.com.”
In a related sign of the times, attendance spiked at this year’s Self-Publishing Book Expo.
“How did I feel about the war when I was in it?” Joseph Heller wrote in a three-page letter to be auctioned this week. “Much differently than Yossarian felt and much differently than I felt when I wrote the novel … In truth I enjoyed it and so did just about everyone else I served with, in training and even in combat… I was young, it was adventurous, there was much hoopla and glamour; in addition, and this too is hard to get across to college students today, for me and for most others, going into the army resulted immediately in a vast improvement in my standard of living.”
Dubravka Ugresic rages agains the hotel minibar, and details its power to humiliate.
The Awl explains how to write romance novels.