James Pasley

In 1999, the LA Times asked 36 writers, from Susan Sontag to Elmore Leonard, to share their neglected classics of the century, books they loved but which failed to find the readers they deserved. You can read their responses here:

neglectedbooks.com/?...

Hearing reports NZ bookstores have sold out of Krasznahorkai. The day has finally come

And Mississippi Burning is one of them

Some films are made for the dusty Friday afternoon classroom

Toshiro Mifune smoking a cig and looking morose

considering the headlines like 1961 Toshiro Mifune 📽️

Would like to be this guy

Picked up this one in a second hand bookstore last week and it has been an unexpected treat

I HAD THOUGHT THINGS WERE GOING ALONG WELL But I was mistaken.

happy birthday John Ashbery 🎈

Rewriting Wolff’s Bullet in the Brain except it’s a cyclist getting hit by a car

Unexpectedly deep poem above the urinal

The literature that makes life possible for me and others is not a given. It has to be made, day after day, by those who are willing to take on the solitude and uncertainty of the work. Writing affords pleasure too, but mostly it's hard work. So here is cause for cele-bration. To the writers of all these stories, I say, Friends, it was worth it. Every day you came up empty, every false start you had to start again from, every word you had to fight for, it was worth it, it was all worth it. —TOBIAS WOLFF

Not me getting emotional this morning at Tobias Wolff’s Introduction to The Best American Short Stories 1994.

Michelle Rahurahu: The road to Poorhara | E-Tangata “For me, it wouldn’t make sense to write a story of two Māori cousins in a beat-up car roaming through this country without talking about all these different monuments to the colonial takeover of this...

“For me, it wouldn’t make sense to write a story of two Māori cousins in a beat-up car roaming through this country without talking about all these different monuments to the colonial takeover of this land.” — Michelle Rahurahu on her Ockham-winning novel ‘Poorhara’.

Excerpt from the Blake Bailey bio of Richard Yates

Excerpt from the Blake Bailey bio of Richard Yates

So hilarious: Richard Yates sits down to watch the Seinfeld episode ("The Jacket") featuring a character based on him (Larry David had once dated his daughter, Monica). From the Bailey bio...

Another day humbled by the big apple. Failed my drivers license after sixteen years on a NZ full. Classic

Better late than never

Shameful you can’t save drafts on here

Stories I Used to Write by David Means I used to write stories that had lakes, that had deep blue waters shelled by the sky; water mucky and full of disease; I wrote stories where people used to break down and cry unbidden, unprovoked, jus...

Certified banger www.theparisreview.org/fiction/1527...

‘Taking Pictures.’ Admittedly it’s Enright so maybe deserved but seems a little on the heavy side!

About to start a book where the writer, in one blurb, is compared to Joan Didion, Alice Munro, Alice McDermott and Edna O’Brien. Classic

There's always a moment when this one-line poem by Brian Turner seems entirely apposite.

NEW ZEALANDERS, A DEFINITION

Born here, buggered it up.

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As a reader, most of the time doesn’t mean much but every now and then a surprising person may prompt a purchase - for instance saw Wells Tower quoted on the cover of an Australian short story collection and couldn’t help myself

Get hitched already

Found poor Bill Styron shoved in the closet

Michael Longley