Monkfish Jowls @monkfishjowls - Tumblr Blog

Some of the world’s prettiest men were in Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant strip.

#prince valiant #I need attending to #🪭🪭

Why yes—I do read it for the articles!

(by Anaïs Nin)

FAQ

“Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much?” -Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I have reckoned a thousand acres in my mind. The fields, the trees, the stones, the dirt. I have walked through and over and I’ve climbed the trees that are there. I’ve looked out from the treetops and looked far, across the whole span. I’ve seen the distant smoke of other people in their thousand acres. I’ve looked at the smallest inhabitants: the skinks and centipedes. I’ve considered the rhino that lives there in one corner. The bobcats and river otters and the badgers lying in the brush. I’ve walked my hound through the place as it sniffs out gerbils and water spots. The thousand acres is just a miniature of the earth as a whole, I say, and reckoning of one means reckoning of the whole place. So I’ve sat here and I’ve arrived at the earth entire without traveling. I’ve heard he poet speak of the paths up the mountains. I’ve read of the finches and ferns and the great networks of mushrooms reaching out to each other with love letters. I’ve looked up at Orion, one of billions who searches out for his belt at night. I’ve seen the invasive and the endangered and the plentiful. The ants, the sandhill cranes, the crocodile. I’ve seen corn high as your knee and as high as your ears. Smell of durian. Smell of soy. Wet soil. Lilac bushes. Hawthorns. Peaches. Freckles.

2025 in Books

Here's just a quick look back at some of the books I read last year, from back to front:

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson; The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus; Aliens and Anorexia by Chris Kraus; The Dharma Buns by Jack Kerouac; All Fours by Miranda July; My Dead Book by Nate Lippens; Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë; I Love Dick by Chris Kraus; The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust.

Preparation for the Novel by Roland Barthes; Break it Down by Lydia Davis; Barley Patch by Gerald Murnane; Inland by Gerald Murnane; Intermezzo by Sally Rooney; Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara; Audition by Katie Kitamura; Outline by Rachel Cusk.

Border Districts by Gerald Murnane; Making Stories by Jerome Bruner; The Color Purple by Alice Walker; Exteriors by Annie Ernaux; Fathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev; Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust; Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel.

Most of these books were accompanied by conversations with my friends Kevin and Emily which enriched all of them. I'm optimistic for many things in the coming years, even the future of fiction writing, although that might be a bit irrational. I fear a bit for the near future with the introduction of instant text generators, and the ocean that might come with it, but maybe that will cause those who do make stories to find new places where the models cannot follow.