Anne Denoon
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annedenoon.bsky.social
Anne Denoon
@annedenoon.bsky.social
2.7K followers 1.2K following 2.9K posts
Crone, malcontent, lapsed (but twitching) novelist. Posts about art & lit.
Me: https://www.writersunion.ca/member/anne-denoon
My book: Back Flip, a novel about art & the 1960s: https://t.co/m7fQSOo6At or (with reviews) https://tinyurl.com/4dzwzpdp
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annedenoon.bsky.social
Follow the ⬅️ to lose some time at the #Osteria in #Ostuni.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekVforVowels #Italy
A whitewashed building with several windows, black iron railings, and a door opening onto a balcony with foliage growing beneath it. On a wall at the lower right is an oval orange sign saying Osteria del Tempo Perso (Restaurant of Lost Time) with an arrow pointing to the left.
November 30, 2025 at 4:02 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Narrator: ❄️They did NOT miss it.❄️
View of a tree trunk and a snowy street with car tracks, seen through a window. It's a colour photo but looks like a black and white one.
November 30, 2025 at 3:44 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Is it Penitence, or just heartburn?
A man in a loincloth, apparently in pain. Pontormo, Penitent St Jerome, 1525–1528, Landesmuseum, Hanover.
November 28, 2025 at 7:58 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
L: the Lafayette Hotel café, by Berenice Abbott.
R: Powell describes the Julien waiters in The Wicked Pavilion.
📚 #DawnPowell #GreenwichVillage #BereniceAbbott
Interior of an old-fashioned restaurant with mirrors, globe lamps, a tiled floor, marble-topped tables with a chess or checker board on one of them. Customers seated at the tables and a black-coated waiter in the background. Photo by Berenice Abbott. The Julien waiters were forthright self-respecting individuals who felt their first duty was to protect the cafe from customers, their second to keep customers and employers in their proper places. The fact that only two of the marble-topped tables were occupied was a state of business perversely satisfactory to these waiters, who had the more leisure for meditation and the exchange of private insults. A young Jersey-looking couple peered curiously in the doorway looking for some spectacular rout that would explain the place's cosmopolitan reputation, then drew back puzzled at seeing only two patrons. Karl, the Alsatian with the piratical mustaches, turned down a chair at each of his three empty tables, indicating mythical reservations, folded his arms again and stared contentedly at the chipped cupids on the ceiling. The more excitable Guillaume, given to muttering personal comments behind his patrons' backs, flapped his napkin busily as if shooing out flies, and shouted after the innocent little couple, "Kitchen closed no, nothing to eat, kitchen closed."
November 28, 2025 at 6:54 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
First editions of Marshall's novels, Presently Tomorrow (Little, Brown, 1946) & Lovers and Strangers (Lippincott, 1957). Both US-published & out of print. A bookplate with (perhaps?) her parents' names in PT.

Bought when prepping for the interview, they cost more than what I was paid for the piece.
Two hardcover books, one with a beige and black cover, the other with a pink, blue and black one. A colored Ex Libris bookplate showing a monk reading a manuscript, with the names Douglas & Helen Marshall handwritten on it in black ink.
November 28, 2025 at 6:36 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Dawn Powell, #BOTD 1896, at the Lafayette Hotel.
📷 Genevieve Naylor

Two of her best New York novels revolve around cafes:
in The Wicked Pavilion (1954) she calls it the Café Julien, and in The Golden Spur (1962), the book title is the name of the watering hole where all the characters intersect.
A middle-aged woman with short hair and dark lipstick, seated at a table in a restaurant, looking up with a quizzical expression. Black and white photo of Dawn Powell at the Lafayette Hotel, New York, 1950s, by Genevieve Naylor.
November 28, 2025 at 4:38 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Here is the piece if anyone is interested & can decipher these scans (sorry about the perfunctory ALTs): 📚
An article by Anne Denoon about the Canadian writer Joyce Marshall from Books in Canada, Summer 1994. An article by Anne Denoon about the Canadian writer Joyce Marshall from Books in Canada, Summer 1994. An article by Anne Denoon about the Canadian writer Joyce Marshall from Books in Canada, Summer 1994. An article by Anne Denoon about the Canadian writer Joyce Marshall from Books in Canada, Summer 1994.
November 28, 2025 at 4:06 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Joyce Marshall, #Canadian writer & translator, #BOTD 1913
📷by Lois Harrison, c. 1957

When I interviewed her in 1994 for Books in Canada, the published piece began: "I don't want this article to be about old age," Joyce Marshall told me in our first conversation, "or about a 'neglected' writer."
A black & white photo of a woman in semi-profile, wearing a buttoned-up light-coloured blouse. She has short hair and holds a cigarette in her right hand.
November 28, 2025 at 3:43 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
A riposte to the waxing moon, because I missed the beautiful crescent earlier this week.

A youthful goddess (Diana?) holding a crescent moon.
Bas-relief, 1447, by Agostino di Duccio
Chapel of the Planets, in Il Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini.
A honey-coloured bas-relief, 1447, of a young goddess or nymph with long hair flying out, wearing a diaphanous classical garment and a robe that balloons in a circle behind her. She strides forward, holding a large crescent moon before her. Artist: Agostino di Duccio.
November 28, 2025 at 1:44 AM
annedenoon.bsky.social
A movie that takes place where you're from.
Still from Winter Kept Us Warm, 1965, directed by David Secter. Two young men in shirtsleeves walk down a snow-covered path between two clipped hedges, with a university residence in the background.
November 27, 2025 at 12:14 AM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Rock formations in the Grand Canyon, seen through the window of a (shriek!) helicopter. 📷by me, 2013
#WindowsOnWednesday
View of rock formations in the Grand Canyon through the window of a helicopter.
November 26, 2025 at 5:16 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
You’ll be visited by three spirits.

The three spirits:
Poster for "Les Girls" (George Cukor, director, 1957) showing Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall and Taina Elg in sparkly showgirl corsets, long white evening gloves, diamond bracelets and earrings and black picture hats. Each has one hand on her hip and the other on her hat.
November 26, 2025 at 5:33 AM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Funny, I was just looking at this postcard of #22 today.
(📷 by Julius Shulman, 1960).
Black and white postcard (from a Taschen book) of Case Study House #22, by Pierre Koenig, Los Angeles, 1959-60. Photo by Jules Shulman. A glass-walled, modern living room is cantilevered over Los Angles at night. Two women in full-skirted dresses are seated in the room, conversing, and not looking at the spectacular view of lighted streets below..
November 25, 2025 at 12:53 AM
annedenoon.bsky.social
In the kitchen, those discs sounded great on this! Alas, it's now unusable for want of, I think, one small spring. (I kept meaning to find someone to repair it, but then streaming intervened.) #Bose 🎶
A Bose bookshelf CD player, 1990s. Computer-beige with silver accent on the front and controls on the top.
November 23, 2025 at 6:08 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
The CD cabinet of yesteryear, a vintage artifact.

Not really unloved, though largely unused nowadays. But I still remember how exciting it was to get access to all this music, a lot of it previously out of reach except on hard-to-find LPs. 🎶

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekUforUnloved
A cabinet with glass shelves full of CDs stored on racks.
November 23, 2025 at 4:07 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
The Capitolium, Ostia Antica
📷by me, 2010
#StairsOnSaturday 🏺🏛️
The Capitolium at Ostia Antica, a large, red brick structure (which would once have been faced with marble slabs) with the remnants of two towers and a set of steep stairs across the width of the building. Ruined monuments in front of it and a blue sky above.
November 22, 2025 at 4:47 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Paraskeva Clark (1898-1986)
Self Portrait, 1931-32
oil on paper
Museum London

#FacesOnFriday #CanadianArt 🎨
Painting (self portrait) of a woman with brown hair and red lipstick, wearing a pink garment and looking over her shoulder at the viewer. Signed P Clark, 31-32.
November 21, 2025 at 5:23 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
The RCMI in its previous life:
(L) 1935 and (R) c.1950. Both photos: City of Toronto Archives.
The current facade seems to evoke the earlier of the two.
Royal Canadian Military Institute, Toronto, 1935. A two-storey neoclassical structure. Royal Canadian Military Institute, Toronto, c.1950. A two-storey neo-classical structure.
November 20, 2025 at 7:47 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Hallucinatory #Facadism, glimpsed in passing from a car.

The Royal Canadian Military Institute on University Avenue, #Toronto. Built 1908, demolished 2010, replicated 2012.

(I remembered the original building but had never seen its new[ish] incarnation until yesterday.) 📷by me, 19/11/25
A small beige- and cream-coloured two-story facade with classical columns, loggias and porticos, installed at the base of a large, modern, glass and concrete building.
November 20, 2025 at 3:58 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
A black door in #Lecce with four caryatids.
📷by me, 2009

#AdoorableThursday #Italy
A black-painted arched doorway flanked by four stone caryatids bearing plinths. The arch is decorated with scrolls and an escutcheon. Five carved stone busts, plus several smaller ones, are above it. In Lecce, Italy, 2009.
November 20, 2025 at 3:25 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Misty Minox Memories, cont'd.

Central Park, New York City, in winter
📷by me, 1979-80(?)
#TreesOnTuesday #NewYork #1970s
A black-and-white Minox photo taken in Central Park in the winter of 1979-80, showing bare, snow-covered trees, a grassy slope and rocks under snow, and three stepped skyscrapers in the distance.
November 19, 2025 at 12:35 AM
annedenoon.bsky.social
This is a fascinating read about TO's ghost #cornerstores.
Here's another that was at Linsmore Cres. & Sammon Ave.

We lived on Linsmore, 1987-91, and when my kid was old enough we'd often stroll & tricycle to it to get popsicles from the 2 men of a certain age (brothers, I think) who ran it.
Google street view (2019) at Sammon Avenue and Linsmore Crescent. A house with white siding and a red roof at street level that once was a corner store.
November 17, 2025 at 6:31 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
...and here's another nice RF stamp, from 1968.
(I wrote about this one in my novel Back Flip; see ALT text.)

#Ingres 🎨📮
From Back Flip, a novel (2002), p.23: "There was a letter for her: a pale blue, nearly square airmail G. Lalo envelope with a Paris postmark. The big one-franc stamp on it was also squarish: a two-colour reproduction of an Ingres bather, seen from the rear. The model’s spine was so sinuous that she seemed to be cowering. One of her arms covered the nipple of her exposed breast but left its peachlike roundness visible. A striped turban like a knotted dishtowel clung precariously to the back of her head as she turned to look, not quite at the viewer, but somewhere off to the side with an expression that combined sadness and apprehension. Though that could just have been the effect of the wavy postmark across her forehead. Jane stuffed the letter into her purse and started up the stairs."
November 17, 2025 at 5:12 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Everything's awful.
So let's look at some old (1974) French postage stamps.
A corner of a letter with French postage stamps from 1974. L to R: Tricentenaire de L'Hotel des Invalides; Watteau; Philippe de Champagne.
November 16, 2025 at 10:44 PM
annedenoon.bsky.social
Stairs at Taliesin West (1937), Arizona
📷by me, 2010
#StairsOnSaturday #FrankLloydWright
An exterior flight of wide, shallow concrete stairs at Taliesin West, Arizona, with scrub foliage and trees around it, and a view of distant mountains under a blue sky.
November 15, 2025 at 3:41 PM