
“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars--to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording--all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...”
― The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
― The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life. For what do we, who love truth, strive after in life? To free ourselves from the body, and from all the evil that is caused by the life of the body! If so, then how can we fail to be glad when death comes to us?
The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is not terrible to him.”
―
The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is not terrible to him.”
―

“New York, of course, is to be in endless surreal situations where a fifty-thousand dollar, gun-metal Mercedez pulls up into a puddle of blood, and out steps a twenty-five karat blonde transvestite with a two dollar wristwatch.”
―
―
“A runner is a miser, spending the pennies of his energy with great stinginess, constantly wanting to know how much he has spent and how much longer he will be expected to pay. He wants to be broke at precisely the moment he no longer needs his coin.”
― Once a Runner
― Once a Runner

“Birthdays, like weddings, anniversaries, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, wakes, are occasions to retie family ties, renew family feuds, restore family feeling, add to family lore, tribalize the psyche, generate guilt, exercise power, wave a foreign flag, talk in tongues, exchange lies, remember dates and the old days, to be fond of how it was, be angry at what it should be, and weep at why it isn't.”
― The Tunnel
― The Tunnel

Women and Men began as a reading group for Joseph McElroy's masterpiece. It has developed into All Things McElroy. We have chapter threads for discuss ...more

No fun allowed. Monthly reads (nominations on the 30th in a topic of this group, vote on the 31st, winner by the 1st).

Lotts hab funn at Finnegans wake!! Here Comes Everybody!! Alle Laffing Prettee!!!

This is a Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ group meant to accompany #OccupyGaddis, the Los Angeles Review of Books's collective reading of William Gaddis's 1975 novel, "J R. ...more

This a group to read and celebrate the writings of Arno Schmidt, with especial emphasis upon the forthcoming release of the Woodsing of his Meisterstü ...more
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