The city clown will soon fall down
Without a face to hide in
And he will lose if he won’t choose
The one he may confide in


Mary Ellen Carroll, Federal (detail), 2003

* David Markson on Malcolm Lowry's alcoholism:

The man could not shave himself. In lieu of a belt, he knotted a rope or a discarded necktie around his waist. Mornings, he needed two or three ounces of gin in his orange juice if he was to steady his hand to eat the breakfast that would very likely prove his only meal of the day. Thereafter a diminishing yellow tint in the glass might belie the fact that now he was drinking the gin neat, which he did for as many hours as it took him to. Ultimately he would collapse — sometimes sensible enough of his condition to lurch toward a bed, though more often he would crash down into a chair, and once it was across my phonograph.

* Paste Magazine lists its top 70 albums of the 1970s.

* "I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss - you can't do it alone." -- John Cheever