Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

This October (on the seventh, to be exact) marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of America’s greatest imaginists. Here for your delectation is not one of his usual shivery slimy nightmares but a very satisfying tale indeed of love, revenge and menchhood...

I was turned on to the wonderful, un-pigeonholeable 2005 film Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party by none other than the director, Robert Brinkmann, who happens to be a mutual acquaintance of an old friend from San Francisco theater, as well by Tobolowsky himself. I talk a little about STBP in an earlier posting which you can find here . Fans have been clamoring for more of the big guy, and now in response comes The Tobolowsky Files , a series of videos in which he shares more of his incredible, funny and poignant life stories. For the audio portion of his Halloween tale, click here to listen. You’re in for a (trick or) treat! Want more Tobolowsky? His hilarious story, “An LSD Christmas”, was published in last year’s winter issue of Cantaraville , which you can read and download at my earlier posting . The editors of Cantaraville are pleased to announce that “An LSD Christmas” was nominated for a Best of the Web award. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. ...

I’ve just been asked by fellow publisher, Sandra Sanchez of the Wessex Collective, to pass on the story of Irene Sendler, who died last year at the age of 98. And so  here  it is.

Mailer’s first short story published by Esquire is this view of army life during the Korean War. It’s appropriate reading for Mad Men fans who’d like to understand better where Dick Whitman’s coming from. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

Jack Kerouac died forty years ago today at the age of 47, in many ways an alien to my generation. But was he a free man? About as free as any of us can be, I suppose. And he could write like an angel. Kerouac’s technique, which he called Spontaneous Prose, was a subject he loved to cover over and over again. Here’s his list of thirty essentials under the title “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose”: 1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy 2. Submissive to everything, open, listening 3. Try never get drunk outside your own house 4. Be in love with your life 5. Something that you feel will find its own form 6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind 7. Blow as deep as you want to blow 8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 9. The unspeakable visions of the individual 10. No time for poetry but exactly what is 11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest 12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 13. Remove l...

As a former Hollywood temp myself, I take a quiet pleasure in this list, courtesy of The Hollywood Temp Diaries .

Here are mine for the moment: Ulysses by James Joyce (already read, bears rereading) Heaven and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg (ditto) The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (always meant to read) (Also see " Happy Birthday, John Sayles, or Which Three Books Would You Choose? ") SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____