An internet search, even in these days of abundant information, yields only that the pamphlets can be found in various library collections, and that they continued to be produced into the '70s. And that Edmund Wilson once sent one, "Mr. P. Squiggle's Reward," to Nabokov, calling it "one of the oddest of many odd things that are sent me by unknown people." He also got the title wrong, dubbing it "Mr. P. Squiggle's Revenge," which is probably significant. But that’s it: nothing about Volk or McCalib.
Epitomes was a series of pamphlets published by Elwin Volk and Dennis McCalib. Few traces of Volk's life are to be found, but he seems to have been a lawyer, and wrote at least a
couple of
pamphlets about law, which he self-published in Pasadena. McCalib is equally elusive. A man by that name contributed to
an issue of One: The Homosexual Viewpoint in 1964. A Dennis McCalib also used the pseudonym
Lord Fuzzy. The aforementioned "Mr. P. Squiggle's Reward" got a
curt, two half-sentence dismissal in Poetry Magazine, otherwise these pamphlets seem not to have troubled the literary world. Someone donated
their manuscripts to UCLA where they rest undigitized in
fourteen boxes. But Library of Congress has scanned a total of
twenty-six pages in
high resolution.
posted by Kattullus
on Jan 27, 2012 -
9 comments
Comiques is a comic about "life's little trivialities" by
Anne Emond. Her main subjects are her
family,
cat,
friends,
New York City and
random musings. It is mostly
drawn from life though her work sometimes
tends towards the fantastic.
Here is a short video interview with her which also features some candid shots of her cat and
here's a longer interview on more technical matters. Finally, here are some random favorites:
Pug,
Celebrity Look-alike Generator,
Irrational Rage Comic,
Umbrella,
Writing a Detective Story?,
The Best Karamazov,
Ode to the Avocado,
Top of the Morning to You and
The Day I Realized I've Never Tried to Dress My Cat in People Clothes.
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 5, 2011 -
15 comments
The Age of Uncertainty is my new favorite blog. It's by a gentleman bookseller who works in a warehouse in Sussex processing lorryfuls of used books. He shares the most interesting things he finds, commenting with wit and sensitivity. He also writes entertainingly about his everyday life. Let me point you towards his series of extracts from a diary that came to his warehouse, detailing the life of Derek, an employee of the government who converted to Mormonism. It was a fairly normal life, but the excerpts are fascinating. Here are the entries in order:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5 and
6. He also posts beautiful images he finds, such as Victorian color plates:
1 and
2. Still, it is the remains of ordinary lives washing up on his shores that most enthralls me, such as
this tear-inducing post about a family photo album which was sent to his used books warehouse.
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 13, 2010 -
27 comments
