all art is a form of prostitution says baudelaire

So this makes me feel like when Edmund Wilson mentioned Anais Nin's self-published debut in The New Yorker. How cool and weird. Although *I* think having Jessa Crispin namecheck you in The Guardian is  much cooler and better than Edmund Wilson and The New Yorker (I have a thing against Bunny for how he treated Mary McCarthy). I think theoretically this means I would be considered for the longlist of the First Book Prize, but since OFA was not published in the UK, probably not. I don't know. And there's 0 books available on Amazon. So, there you go.

signs

I am in the woods of Virginia, at a writer's retreat in a big old house. I am at my desk looking out at all the trees, feeling a bit like Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil. On the bookshelf in my room: Streetcar Named Desire, The Family Reunion by T.S. Eliot (his play in which Viv is the murdered wife who ghosts the main character), the letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald. This feels like some sort of sign.