Monday, September 16, 2013

Sites to See


I just want to highlight some super-cool scholarly and texan and scholarly-texan-type things going on around the web:

First, if you're reading James Joyce or planning a trip to Dublin, you have to visit Jasmine Mulliken's meticulously-researched Mapping Dubliners Projectwhich features online maps of every place referenced in Dubliners and mapped routes of all of the collection's characters. Jasmine also writes a blog, spotlighting a new place from the book each week, with notes on its history and its role in the text.

Second, the Harry Ransom Center has a blog! How did I not know about this until now? It's full of fascinating commentary on the center's holdings--I learned about it the day Michael Gilmore wrote about the famous scuffle between Ernest Hemingway and Max Eastman, which took place in the office of Hemingway's editor after Eastman challenged Hemingway's manhood. The story is unbelievable, and Gilmore's posts reminds me of exactly why I love archival work. 

Finally, I knew Hannah Gamble in Houston, and now she's blowing up on the national poetry scene. She'll be featured in next month's Poetry and she's doing a reading at the KGB Bar in New York tonight. Her 2012 collection "Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast" garnered this great review from Anna Journey at the Kenyon Review.  And you can see her at the top of this post, reading a poem and being interviewed by her former professor Richard Jackson. 


Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Happy birthday, Freddie King!


Texas has produced a lot of great bluesmen (and blueswomen). Happy birthday to one of the best: the Texas Cannonball, Freddie King, seen above with Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. King would have been 79 today.