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jeffdkr.bsky.social
@jeffdkr.bsky.social
620 followers 280 following 900 posts
Retired artist, old school BSI. I prefer dead authors: Somerset Maugham, Hemingway, Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury, Thomas Wolfe, T.S. Eliot …. but my reading lamp is dimming.
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sanctorium.bsky.social
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems
November 21, 2025 at 12:01 PM
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neckties-of-noir.bsky.social
#horror #filmsky #moviesky

Bram Stoker #BOTD
visited the ruins of 7th-century Whitby Abbey on the North Yorkshire Coast in 1890. It was the inspiration for the setting of his novel, Dracula, published in 1897.
IStock photo of Whitby Abbey on the North Yorkshire coast of England
November 8, 2025 at 12:03 PM
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joiedevivre9.bsky.social
I think I might do something a little different next year for #NYRBWomen26. I’m considering just 1 book per month because 1) I’d like to focus better & be more thoughtful +2) I want to reread May Sarton’s nonfiction & am hoping to find a small group that might want to join me. More thoughts below👇
May Sarton May Sarton May Sarton May Sarton
November 8, 2025 at 5:39 PM
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john-self.bsky.social
"A ring at the door. It was Flaubert."

In tribute to Helen Garner winning the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, I put together a list of some of the best writers' diaries, from the Goncourt brothers to John Cheever ("Every time I read a review of Saul Bellow, I get the heaves"):
The 10 best writers’ diaries — from Virginia Woolf to Alan Bennett
As Helen Garner’s diaries win the Baillie Gifford prize, John Self picks ten more literary journals brimful of insight and scandal
www.thetimes.com
November 9, 2025 at 8:50 AM
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margiedeck.bsky.social
Thanks for your kind words, @rileyblakebooks.bsky.social!
November 5, 2025 at 5:13 PM
jeffdkr.bsky.social
I love these candid, out-of-character shots.
October 29, 2025 at 9:07 PM
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vangogh.bsky.social
Farmhouse in a Wheat Field - 1888
https://botfrens.com/collections/46/contents/14273
October 27, 2025 at 1:07 PM
jeffdkr.bsky.social
Spent the weekend in picturesque Salem .... had a wonderful time.
October 24, 2025 at 3:50 PM
jeffdkr.bsky.social
Some loose, rough sketches from my small moleskin notebook, 20-25 yrs ago ....
September 30, 2025 at 4:51 PM
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jeffdkr.bsky.social
June 23, 2025 at 7:19 PM
jeffdkr.bsky.social
September 21, 2025 at 1:24 PM
jeffdkr.bsky.social
DOTD in 1938, Thomas Wolfe of Asheville.
“Some of his rhetoric is effective and at times deeply moving … These are the errors of the young and the amateur; he was always to be young, always to be amateur, he would never have changed. But he also had something of real genius.” — Pamela H. Johnson
September 15, 2025 at 10:56 AM
jeffdkr.bsky.social
September 11, 2025 at 11:07 AM
jeffdkr.bsky.social
I second that opinion!
margiedeck.bsky.social Margie Deck @margiedeck.bsky.social · Sep 9
At the airport at stupid o’clock early as directed so I can wait an annoying amount of time to board. I’ve brought a suitably grumpy and often annoying (but brilliant, damn it) man to read.
September 9, 2025 at 1:01 PM
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drannaclark.bsky.social
”…and pray you'll never know,
The hell where youth and laughter go.”
Siegfried Sassoon, English war poet, born #OTD 1886.
National Portrait Gallery London
September 8, 2025 at 5:03 AM
jeffdkr.bsky.social
Just one of Maxwell’s novels worth reading. Clean & beautiful prose.
rohanmaitzen.bsky.social Rohan Maitzen @rohanmaitzen.bsky.social · Sep 7
“Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end.”

What a deeply melancholy and yet beautifully resonant book.
Photo of William Maxwell’s short novel So Long, See You Tomorroe showing farmhouses and trees against billowing clouds all in a black and white / sepia tone
September 7, 2025 at 1:50 PM
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profdarryljones.bsky.social
‘For the Dead Remember: The Life of M. R. James’ will be published by Oxford University Press on 10 September 2026. Set your watches, mark your calendars, and spread the word!
July 29, 2025 at 6:25 AM
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munkiman.bsky.social
Remembering fantasy, sci-fi, horror and mystery fiction author Ray Bradbury, born August 22, 1920, Waukegan, Illinois (d. June 5, 2012). Best remembered for his Fahrenheit 451 and other novels that combined poetic language with social commentary and a recurring theme of nostalgia. More: alt text
Bradbury (1920–2012) was an acclaimed American author and one of the most celebrated writers of speculative fiction in the 20th century. Though best known for his science fiction and fantasy works, his prolific career included novels, screenplays, teleplays, essays, and poetry. Throughout his life, Bradbury was famously prolific, writing every day. Estimates of his total output vary, but he produced an immense volume of work across multiple formats. Bradbury published nearly 30 novels and story collections. Some of his most famous novels include Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote between 400 and 600 short stories. Many of these were collected in anthologies such as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, which are considered some of his most beloved works. He also wrote poetry, essays, children's books, and collections of his crime stories. Bradbury wrote and contributed to numerous screenplays for films and television. Moby Dick (1956): Bradbury wrote the screenplay for John Huston's classic film adaptation, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. It Came from Outer Space (1953): He contributed to the screenplay for this classic monster movie. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983): Bradbury penned the screenplay for the film adaptation of his own dark fantasy novel. The Halloween Tree (1993): He won an Emmy Award for the teleplay of this animated film. Bradbury also adapted 65 of his own stories for the anthology television series "The Ray Bradbury Theater," which ran from 1985 to 1992.
August 23, 2025 at 12:54 AM
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imnjupiter.bsky.social
#AnthonyPowellTogether
August 21, 2025 at 2:41 AM
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grantmcgaheran.bsky.social
'We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever - the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.'
J.L. Carr A Month in the Country
August 21, 2025 at 3:08 PM
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bgrueskin.bsky.social
I use this Saunders quote every year w/ our J School students

cc @kairyssdal.bsky.social
“Who cares if the first draft is good? It doesn’t need to be good, it just needs to be, so you can revise it. “You don’t need an idea to start a story. You just need a sentence. ”Where does that sentence come from? Wherever. It doesn’t have to be anything special. It will become something special, over time, as you keep reacting to it. “Reacting to that sentence, changing it, hoping to divest it of some of its ordinariness or sloth is … writing.” -- George Saunders, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain
August 17, 2025 at 1:52 PM
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annedenoon.bsky.social
"I wanted to live in Paris and write nothing but fiction and be perfectly free. I had decided all this had to be settled by the time I was thirty, and so I gave up my job and moved to Paris at twenty-eight. I just held my breath and jumped." * - Mavis Gallant, #BOTD 1922 📚
Black and white photo of the writer Mavis Gallant, sitting on a bench in a Paris park, wearing a tartan skirt and dark sweater. Her legs are crossed and she rests her chin on her clasped hands, looking off to her left.
August 11, 2025 at 2:41 PM
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munkiman.bsky.social
Remembering novel & short story writer, journalist & notorious cat lady Ernest Hemingway, born July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, IL (d. July 2, 1961). He's known for his concise, direct writing style, which stripped away unnecessary details (the "Iceberg Theory"). More: alt text
“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he shed his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.” ~ Ernest Hemingway, excerpted from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, found in Carlos Baker’s Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (Scribner’s, 1969) Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, Hemingway's passion for the outdoors and his experiences as a high school journalist influenced his writing style. He worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star before serving as an ambulance driver in World War I, where he was wounded. His time in Paris among expatriate American writers shaped his work, leading to the publication of his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926. He went on to write other acclaimed novels like A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the latter earning him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway's works often explored themes of war, love, loss, and the human condition. His writing is characterized by its economical, understated style, which he called the "Iceberg Theory," also known as the theory of omission. This is a writing technique where the majority of a story's meaning and context are implied or suggested, with only a small portion explicitly stated, much like an iceberg with only a small tip visible above the water. This approach, popularized by Hemingway, emphasizes that the most impactful elements of a story are often those that are not directly presented but rather inferred by the reader. The theory (for fiction only) suggests that writers should deliberately omit details, explanations, and descriptions, leaving room for the reader's interpretation and imagination. The unspoken elements, the subtext, and the implied meaning become crucial for conveying the deeper themes and emotions of the story. Ernest Hemingway, known for his hyper-masculine persona and works, also had a complex relationship with gender identity, including experiences that surprised and challenged traditional norms. Hemingway's mother, Grace, reportedly desired twins and dressed young Ernest and his sister Marcelline in similar clothing, sometimes including girls' clothes, even referring to them as her "sweet Dutch dollies." A photograph of a two-year-old Ernest was even captioned "summer girl" in a scrapbook. Some scholars theorize this "twinning and gender flipping" by his mother caused "trauma" and "profoundly disturbed the formation of his early ego, gender identity, and body image." Hemingway's posthumously published novel, The Garden of Eden, delves into themes of gender fluidity and sexual experimentation. The novel features a couple, David and Catherine, who engage in gender role-playing, including Catherine cutting her hair short and expressing a desire to be seen as a boy, and David accepting this transformation by calling her "Catherine" even while seeing her as his "girl Catherine." Some interpretations suggest this novel mirrors Hemingway's own fascinations with blurring gender lines in his relationships and sexuality. Hemingway's biographer, Mary Dearborn, argues that he was "queer" in the sense that he "shook up people's expectations about sexuality and the behavior of men and women" even if he wasn't openly gay. His private life included instances of "gender-swapping" and interest in androgyny. July 1961 brought a sudden end to Ernest Hemingway’s storied life. He and his wife Mary were settling into a new home on the banks of the Big Wood River in the Sawtooth Mountains of Ketchum, Idaho—better known as the ski paradise of Sun Valley. They had fled their longtime estate in Cuba shortly after the Batista regime was toppled by Fidel Castro. All of Hemingway’s family was expected to visit Ketchum at the end of the month to celebrate his 62nd birthday on July 21. But on a Sunday morning — July 2, 19 days short of Hem’s birthday — the famed writer awoke early in a discombobulated and distressed mood. He left his bedroom and descended into the basement of his new home — described by The New York Times as a “modern concrete house” — where he unlocked his gun cabinet and grabbed his favorite shotgun and some ammunition. He climbed back up the stairs, walked across the living room, and stopped in the house’s oak-paneled entryway. The rest is literary history — and part of a family’s legacy of pain. His wife recalled being awakened to “the sound of a couple drawers banging shut.” She went downstairs to ascertain the cause of the racket only to find a crumpled “Papa” on the floor. When the Times ran its obituary of Hemingway on the front page of its July 3, 1961, issue, Mary Hemingway’s statement on her husband’s death was clear, concise and misleading: "Mr. Hemingway accidentally killed himself while cleaning a gun this morning at 7:30 AM. No time has been set for the funeral services, which will be private." Words by Dr. Howard Markel for PBS.
July 21, 2025 at 4:31 PM
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carlac.bsky.social
Marvelous man!
August 2, 2025 at 6:43 PM