James Purdy, r.i.p.

A fine obituary by William Grimes in the March 14 New York Times.

"Reputations are made here, as in Russia, on political respectability, or by commercial acceptability," he once said. "The worse the author, the more he is known."

Bruce Jenkins, intro to "On the Camera Arts & Consecutive Matters: The Writings of Hollis Frampton" (MIT Press April 2009)

Frampton may strike contemporary readers as being a bit like the protagonist of the Dali and Bunuel film Un Chien Andalou: a figure whose quest is freighted with cultural baggage from the past, symbolized in his arduous attempts to drag a pair of grand pianos, laden with dead donkeys, and two bound Catholic priests, across the parlor that separates him from his object of desire.