Cervantes - in context

I say, too, that when a painter desires to become famous in his art he endeavours to copy the originals of the rarest painters that he knows - and the same rule holds good for all the most important crafts and callings that serve to adorn a state. Thus must he who would be esteemed prudent and patient imitate Ulysses...

Favourite footnotes: 10

This article was amended on 12 January 2016: in the picture caption, Matthew Collings was initially misidentified as William Boyd; the painting by Stephen Finer was wrongly attributed by the provider to David Bowie

- The Guardian (but of course), in a William Boyd article about an artist he and Bowie had made up

Books I've actually (re-)finished lately: 100

For years now

I've had this
whistling
sound in
my ears

- WG Sebald

Thomas Crown - in context

From New Cross to Greenwich in one generation, you gotta have the paintings to match.

Books I've actually finished lately: 95

The publishing trade shouldn't just be guarding against Google, but against itself, against its increasingly fainhearted conviction about its own necessity.

- Roberto Calasso

[NB The Art of the Publisher (sic) is sent unto you by the same literary eminences responsible for this.]

Not from Blackadder(?) - 3

As you wrestle with the rantings of Austria's most lethal watercolourist...

- Richard Lea, in The Guardian

BS Detector

Like abstract painting... abstract poetry extended the range over which incompetence would fail to declare itself.

- Clive James, Poetry Notebook, 2006-2014 (in Literary Review December 2014/January 2015)

War literature - what is it good for? (2)

Recently, I had [the] experience [of] listening to Major General John Borling (USAF, retired), a former fighter pilot and six-year Vietnam POW. When asked to name the most important courses he took as an Academy cadet, Borling immediately responded: “Humanities courses—art history, music appreciation, literature, introductory philosophy.”

- Thomas G McGuire, in War, Literature, & the Arts

Books I've actually finished lately: 50

I am keen to know why Macfarlane-Deakin took 'two hipflasks (one of whisky, one of arak)' - and where they got their 'arak' from, in Dorset.

Books I've actually finished lately: 46

(Editor's note: Also, I have just named my first dog 'Maus', on account of how he looks exactly like the one on the left.)

Books I've actually finished lately: 40

Cock-in-mouth, I'm afraid, is pretty much a condition of existence.

- Randall, or The Painted Grape

Sunday reading

[with thanks to @leaheli]

New favourite magazine 'cover' (EVER!!!)

Books I've actually finished lately: 21

Dave Eggers does a decent buffalo

and other graphic whimsies.

Delights

An artist friend writes, concerning 'Bosch's Garden of Earthy [sic] Delights'...

Only in English - 13

still lifes
vs.
still lives

A confederacy of identikits

The amazing truth about Ignatius J Reilly, et al.

InDefinition - 48

lessthetic, adj. of one who can't tell his art from his elbow

Monty Python's guide to child-rearing

I regret not being abused as a child by poor, nasty parents. Having a wonderful childhood made it much more painful and difficult to become an artist.

- Terry Gilliam, The Times