dear georgia, you raise a fascinating question. i am guessing tomato red is for the autumn dante, while maroon is for winter—but in either case, red body sock is an amazing look. perhaps we should try to bring it back for a new season in sf? hm? hm?

dear michael, thank you for the very interesting link—i was immediately captured by the subhead (pitting “standard history” vs “its fascinating underbelly”), and am now wondering how many other standard academic disciplines have fascinating underbellies that could generate a novel, or three…

dear lauren, what an amazing observation about the identical mouths… do you think ms. conrad might consider donating her body to the forensic sciences, in order to establish whether there is a genetic link?? (ps my second book—the one about fascinating underbellies—is totally gonna have candy on the front and a full-page head shot on the back.)

dear lmberbe, you are absolutely right. to me, his expression says more, “i just built a very reliable chair you might pay $30 to sit in.”

dear james, thank you for the beautiful poem! and dear lk, alas, i didn’t make it to see benigni… although georgia, the body-sock expert, did. if i remember right, she said that in english he was playing it too much for laughs… i guess he really wants to convey that he wrote a really entertaining book we might like to pay €16 for…)

http://www.museocasadidante.it/images/site/dante/dante_2.jpg

How nice that you’re back at your blog! I remember meditating over the Inferno at Seminary in 1963, circling closer to where I just knew I would end up.

There was a fascinating piece in the Globe and Mail on Saturday by Sarah Dunant, writing of her love of being lonely in Florence leading to writing three novels about the lost history of women. Here’s the link:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/the-heart-and-the-history/article1198646/

I hope you keep blogging away and can’t wait for the Dante piece.

So nice to stalk you on your web site. I, too, prefer the Dante whose mouth looks like a painfully contorted coat hangar.

As to your which is the face of a true A list writer query, allow me, representative of the fiction for short people faction, to submit the following:

http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2009/06/fug_girls_book_club_lauren_con.html?imw=Y&f=most-viewed-24h5

This paragon of A-list-ness has a piggy bank slot of a mouth that is much more like the “new and improved” reconstructed Dante. So I think that settles it. . . long-suffering is sooo 674 years ago.

sincerely,
Lauren

and a poem by paul otremba:

I don’t think they’ll find the new weaving
anywhere finer than truth.
—Osip Mandelstam

I’ve tried to sift a truth finer than salt
from my mouth. It matters: I get up

or I do not. The books can wait, leaves
burn themselves these days, and the day

begins or it does not. Now wingless,
a wasp masquerading as the sun crawls—

a harmless razor—across the backlit
curtain. No city trembles on the verge

of the sea. No stupid bird threatens
to dissolve me if I forget my species

in the official questionnaire. I could
put my ten bureaucrats to their task.

The dusting and polishing. There’s a point,
a mirror for me to enumerate my teeth.

Beyond these walls, there’s only the snowed-in
field, an egg just opened but empty.