The Mumpsimus

The Movies Are Dying: A Video Poem . (Futzing around, I made a thing.)

I find it mildly embarrassing to be so enamored of Bolaño these days. I picked up By Night in Chile and Distant Star back when they were the only Bolaño books available in English -- back in the dusty old days of, what, 2005? -- and they both perplexed me and impressed me; then when Last Evenings on Earth came out, I picked it up and was blown away -- something really felt like it exploded in my head, and I went back and reread parts of By Night in Chile and Distant Star and they felt so much richer than they had before. I had, in some ways, been teaching myself how to read Bolaño. There was great praise of Bolaño from the moment the first translations appeared, but the praise and admiration for Bolaño back then felt restrained and quiet compared to what would happen when The Savage Detectives came out -- suddenly it seemed like Bolaño had been made the saint of all literature. I was excited, yes, but also a bit fearful, and I resisted Savage Detectives for a while, partly, ...

At The Valve, John Holbo just posted this cover from the June 1953 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries : Yes, indeed -- Ayn Rand and Franz Kafka in one pulp magazine together! But it's better than that. Here's the entire table of contents: Worms of the Earth by Robert E. Howard Pendulum by Ray Bradbury and Henry Hasse Bernie Goes to Hell by Arthur Dekker Savage Find the Happy Children by Benjamin Ferris The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka Haunted Hostel by Emma L'Hommedieu Frost Dirge (Aztec) by Louis M. Hobbs Anthem by Ayn Rand Yes, Robert E. Howard, Ray Bradbury, Ayn Rand, and Franz Kafka all in one issue! (All reprints -- I would love to know what went through Mary Gnaedinger's mind as she put it together...) As noted at The Valve, this was the final issue of FFM , "after which the magazine evidently died of confusion." This is apparently a particularly rare issue -- the least expensive copy I could find on the internet is going for $61, and it...