@levistahl.bsky.social
Editor of The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany and The Daily Sherlock Holmes. Marketing Director at the University of Chicago Press. Board member of the Uptown People’s Law Center.
Yes, we had lunch! It was great to see him after so long!
Omg, that sounds like the perfect visit. It is among my favorite museums in London. I once was upstairs in Johnson’s house and heard hoofbeats outside, which felt like a ghostly visitation but turned out to be a police horse.
We even went to the Johnson museum in Lichfield once.
I do, of course, include -something- from Samuel Johnson. And also note that he lived near two London alleys named Pissing Alley.
It is with pride that I note that this issue of my newsletter runs to some 60 quotes about London without including the single most famous one.
Love ya, Dr. Johnson—I mean, I’ve got a goddam bust of you on my desk—but there’s no more squeeze in that lemon, friend.
lol, that’s fine, it won’t stop me!
I literally was planning to note that as a point of pride here later tonight.
“And there’s been a resurgence of interest in religion, you know. It’s a reaction to the war. People are looking for guidance.”
“There’s no call to go looking in that direction.”
—Beryl Bainbridge, An Awfully Big Adventure
Beryl Bainbridge, An Awfully Big Adventure.
The bus simulator was glitchy, and after a while the bus would detach from its surroundings and float against a field of white, rising into the heavens or perhaps sinking into the earth. You could still change the view to see the interior, and all was normal there. But bus and city had parted ways.
Remarkable . . . wacky as a fruitcake.
—Donald Klopfer of Random House, on Ayn Rand
Thinking again about the bus simulator game my friend’s 12-year-old son showed me Sunday, in which he drove a bus 80 mph down Picadilly. It was something.
Something the Bennett Cerf biography has reminded me of is how much the public admired J. Edgar Hoover back at mid-century. An impressive (and well-deserved) fall from grace for that man.
Good morning, friends, from London!
Imma start wearing taps.
lol I bought these shoes 10 days ago. I am death on shoes.
Thank you! It was really fun to have an excuse to dig through my files for this topic.
Just realized that I really should have included a piece of graffiti I saw from a bus in Penge Sunday: “Merry Pengemas, you filthy animals.” Very London, that.
Yes, and OMG.
Because I'm in London, I'm thinking about London, and thus issue 14 of my newsletter, This, Not That, is a commonplace book entry full of quotes about one of my favorite cities, a place I've been coming to for 30 years and still love as deeply as ever.
this-not-that.ghost.io/issue-14-lon...
“The slattern in the gumboots staggered out to sling washing-up slops into the gutter.” That’s a good sentence.
Emotions weren’t like washing. There was no call to peg them out for all to view.
—Beryl Bainbridge, An Awfully Big Adventure
Good morning, friends, from London! (Flowers back home in early March are still but a dream.)
Maybe—if so, thank you!
He almost irritated her by telling her she was kind. She was, but she was not pleased at having it recognized so soon.
—Henry James, “A London Story”
I would not have believed before that anyone else could hold that spot, but, yes, now I’m all in.
There is an air of futility about it that is balanced by ongoing determination to keep at it that I liked. It’s quiet and very (Englishly) restrained. In an afterword, Deighton quotes a critic who says there are no villains in Deighton, and I can see that. The sense of place & period is strong.
My god, this was good. I can’t remember which of you recommended Deighton, but I am extremely grateful.
It is only the very devout who toy with heresy.
—Len Deighton, Berlin Game
Realized I had an open hour today and decided to find a piano studio to book. I had to walk all of 300 steps from my hotel lol. It was good to get to play a bit.
Took me four shops, but I did complete my Elizabeth Jane Howard collection.