Michael L Sevy

we can speak of past time, and in a vaguer, but familiar sense, of future time, but we simply cannot expect a second nothing, a second void, a second blank. Oblivion is a one-night performance; we have been to it once, there will be no repeat.
-Vladimir Nabokov “Ada, or Ardor”

Started up my weekly zoom lit group last Tuesday (we’re doing Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor) I looked beyond the monitor at my newly brushhogged field to catch a deer taking a crap.

Beautiful (and blind) Miss Kitty

Ernie Kovacs Gravesite "Nothing in Moderation"

Very good article. Made me think about the opposing idea of finding the like within differences. And The Au Pairs song “you’re equal but different, it’s obvious”.

Fingerprint by Michael L Sevy we had a dinette, the house was too small for a proper dining room, there was a painting on the wall, notable because artwork was minimal in the house, I was fascinated by this painting, it looked …

Many thanks to @wordkunst.bsky.social and the staff at @thearsonista.bsky.social for publishing my piece “Fingerprint”. burninghousepress.com/2025/09/18/f...

Fingerprint by Michael L Sevy we had a dinette, the house was too small for a proper dining room, there was a painting on the wall, notable because artwork was minimal in the house, I was fascinated by this painting, it looked …

FINGERPRINT by Michael L Sevy @mlsevy.bsky.social

New for BURNING HOUSE PRESS @thearsonista.bsky.social

LANDSCAPE // LABYRINTH

burninghousepress.com/2025/09/18/f...

YouTube video by Swans - Topic God Damn The Sun

For when I’m mad at the sun. youtu.be/7Y8sZoi304I

YouTube video by Michael L Sevy Searching My Brain, No, There's Nothing by Michael L Sevy

Composed and recorded yesterday. A 3 chord theme, some musings, theme restated and out. youtu.be/ZGUldX46rI8?...

From the latest NYRB sale. Most looking forward to Cesare Pavese. I know his prose but not his poetry.

Hard to keep it to just 10 films but for the moment these are my choices.

Some have a great dream in life that they never accomplish. Others have no dream, and likewise never accomplish it.
-Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet) tr. Richard Zenith

Fave film each decade
10s The Cook
20s Greed
30s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
40s Detour
50s Ordet
60s Viridiana
70s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
80s Grave of the Fireflies
90s Eternity and a Day
00s Werckmeister Harmonies
10s An Elephant Sitting Still
20s Godzilla Minus One

Doubt belongs to the present tense and the present tense only; it blossoms upon it like a poisonous lily on the clouded top of a pond. At this point the narrator would do anything he can to extricate himself from the dark well of the present tense.
-Magdalena Tulli (Moving Parts) tr Bill Johnston

Mathias Énard wrote this over 17 years ago when almost 1/2 of the current population of Gaza were not yet born.
- “Zone” translated Charlotte Mandell

I could cry with all my body, all my life, that this was a fortunate thing for me and I knew it. That for me, writing was like crying. That no book could be joyful without indecency.
-Marguerite Duras (Yann Andréa Steiner) tr. Mark Polizzotti

“Wouldn't it be amusing to see how they would look if one were to be so extremely foolish as to show them the beneficial effects that are sometimes produced here by those people who give them a feeling of such great, such mortal boredom.”

-Nathalie Sarraute (Here) trans. Barbara Wright

My Heresies by Alina Stefanescu. And Giaco, a cat.

Giaco with a strong recommendation. I concur.

You came here to gather up a life. But you know what you’re gathering? Words. No - more like air, my friend - words are sounds composed of air. Air. You’re gathering air.

-Antonio Tabucchi (Tristano Dies: A Life) trans. Elizabeth Harris

Despite huge advances in science and technology, it will seem a barbarous time.

Archipelago Book sale haul.

YouTube video by Michael L Sevy Decorative or Functional: A False Argument by Michael L Sevy

Yesterday I took a break from writing words and wrote music instead. youtu.be/K_vuU07XP_4

“Midway upon the journey of her life
Mrs. Dalloway found herself in a dark wood, because
She’d wandered off the path, away from the light”

An inside account, anecdotal, but inspiring and informative. Richter's many descriptions of the elevation of 'chance' as in his Visionäre Porträts: painting in the twilight, his groping hand as it got darker and darker "the picture took shape before the inner rather than the outer eye."

Monthly Dispatch #21 — February 2025 A letter from the editor[s]

Monthly Dispatch #21 — February 2025

ft. @mlsevy.bsky.social @sarahkdawson.bsky.social James Rodker, @tyholter.bsky.social Joel Gordon, Golan Haji, Tyler Cain Lacy, @perfidiousscript.bsky.social & more ...

minorlits.substack.com/p/monthly-di...

The sequel to Blindness that seems not to be a sequel until it is.
By the way, Sterne does finally get Walter and Toby down that staircase, then on to more satire and more . . .

10. Vladimir Nabokov "Ada, or Ardor"
11. Nadine Gordimer "July's People"
Hwang Sok-yong "The Guest" 
Gabriel García Márquez "The Autumn of the Patriarch"

7. Richard Wright "Native Son" 
8. W. Somerset Maugham "The Razor’s Edge"
Nikos Kazantzakis "Zorba the Greek"
9. Intro to the French New Novel
Alain Robbe-Grillet "The Erasers"
Marguerite Duras "The Ravishing of Lol Stein"
Nathalie Sarraute "Tropisms"
cont.

My lit group has 11 nominees for our schedule. Now we vote.
1. Kingsley Amis "Lucky Jim"
Martin Amis "Money"
2. Gustave Flaubert "Madame Bovary"
3. Haruki Murakami "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle"
4. Franz Kafka "The Trial"
5. Helen DeWitt "The Last Samurai"
6. Mircea Cărtărescu "Solenoid"
cont.

Volume 5, Issue 1 Visit the post for more.

Wrote a thing for A Row of Trees, The Journal of The Sonic Art Research Unit.
arowoftrees.co.uk/volumes/volu...