December 2024 Update
The Modern Word: I have completed a round of major revisions to The Garden of Forking Paths, with a few extra pieces that will come tricking in over December. I plan on taking a break from The Modern Word for a spell to work on White Leviathan. I also plan on doing a few more radio pieces about literature and modern music for William Grosvenor Neil’s WTJU radio show.
White Leviathan: Chapter 6 of White Leviathan is quite substantial. Set on Katau Peidi, an inhabited Pacific Island drawn from Pohnpeian mythology, it’s an entire scenario in itself, and is one of the longest chapters in the game! I hope to start posting sections by the end of the year.
2024 December 3
The Modern Word: A review of Jason Wilson’s Critical Lives: Jorge Luis Borges has been added to the Borges Biographies page.
2024 December 1
The Modern Word: The composer William Grosvenor Neil recently interviewed Allen Ruch of The Modern Word (that’s me!) on his WTJU radio show. The subject is Stephen Albert’s To Wake the Dead, the magnificent song cycle adapted from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The show premiered on November 17, and has been archived on Neil’s Soundcloud page.
2024 October 8
The Modern Word: A Mason Bates page has been added to the “Borges and Music” section, along with a detailed review of his Borges-inspired suite, Anthology of Fantastic Zoology.
2024 September 18
The Modern Word: A full review of Collected Epiphanies of James Joyce has been added to the Brazen Head.
2024 September 9
The Modern Word: The Lawrence Casserley section of “Borges and Music” has been expanded to include The Edge of Chaos, a haunting album of electroacoustic music bookended by two Borges parables: “Ragnarök” and “Everything and Nothing.”
2024 September 3
The Modern Word: All the broken/missing book images have been repaired on Spermatikos Logos, the Thomas Pynchon site. And that concludes this miserable project—hundreds of book images had to be located, downloaded, cleaned-up, re-sized, and inserted into The Modern Word this summer! And a crazy parrot makes a poor intern.
2024 September 1
The Modern Word: The William Neil page in “Borges and Music” has been updated to include an MP3 of Límites, kindly provided by the composer. A 16-minute journey into darkness, Límites is a setting of Borges’ poem about blindness, aging, and erasure. It’s played by the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra with mezzo-soprano Jean Strazdes.
2024 August 31
The Modern Word: All Amazon broken images/links have been restored to the Thomas Pynchon site, except for the “Pynchon Criticism” section. That’s…gonna take awhile.
2024 August 30
The Modern Word: The Borges Audiobook section has been revised and expanded to include the recent Penguin audiobooks of their 1999 “Borges centennial” editions. All three volumes have been fully reviewed. (Though sadly, only Collected Fictions is worth hearing.) Also, the Garden has posted the complete 1972 Alexander Scourby reading of The Aleph and Other Stories! Unavailable on the Web for several years, these MP3s may be streamed from the Garden, or downloaded for later listening.
2024 August 28
The Modern Word: The Borges on Film pages have been updated and revised. Numerous broken links have been repaired, and the good news is: many of these Borges-related films have been recently placed on YouTube or Vimeo, including Santiago’s Invasión, Bertolucci’s The Spider’s Stratagem, Cox’s Death and the Compass, and Katz’s Splits!
2024 August 26
The Modern Word: The Borges Interviews section has been revised, with some new material added.
2024 August 23
The Modern Word: The Borges Criticism section is now complete, with eleven additional works added since the last update. Also, “Political and Theoretical” criticism has been separated from “Comparative Criticism” to make browsing easier.
2024 August 13
The Modern Word: The entire Borges Criticism section has been overhauled! Over a dozen new books have been added, and most entries have been expanded. Wherever appropriate, texts have been linked to the Internet Archive, and most books now include a “Reviews” heading which collects links to offsite reviews from JSTOR, Project MUSE, and ProQuest. Another dozen or so critical books are forthcoming, and will be added over the next few weeks.
2024 August 12
The Modern Word: All pages of the Garden of Forking Paths detailing Borges’ poetry have been revised and expanded: Poetry Compilations, Early Poetry, Mid-Career Poetry, and Late Poetry. This completes the revisions of the “Borges Works” section. Criticism about Borges’ poetry has been gathered into a new page called Borges Criticism—Poetics.
2024 August 10
The Modern Word: So many muses! The “Borges Collaborations” page has been expanded once again, and is now complete—or at least until new translations become available.
2024 August 8
The Modern Word: A page on Phantasmagorias I has been added to the “Borges and Music” Gheorghi Arnaoudov section. Also known as the Concerto for Violin, Harpsichord, Keyboard Instruments, Percussion, and Orchestra, its three movements were inspired by Ficciones, the poem “El sueño,” and The Book of Imaginary Beings.
2024 August 7
The Modern Word: Tango, tango, tango! All the tango entries in “Borges and Music” have been extensively revised: Jairo, Valeria Munárriz, and most extensively, Astor Piazzolla. Piazzolla’s 1979 soundtrack to A intrusa has finally been profiled, and the page on María de Buenos Aires has been expanded. Most importantly, all currently-deleted Borges-related tango albums have been made available for public downloading as MP3s on their appropriate pages!
2024 August 4
The Modern Word: The “Borges Biographies” have been removed from the “Borges Criticism” section and expanded into their own “Borges Biographies & Memoirs” section.
2024 July 29
The Modern Word: The sections on Borges Biographies and Borges Criticism 1965–1986 in “Borges Criticism” page have been revised. Images have been repaired and updated, entries have been expanded, new books have been added, and wherever appropriate, links have been provided to the Internet Archive.
2024 July 24
The Modern Word: The section on Lectures, Conversations & Interviews in “Borges Works” page has been revised, and links have been provided to the Internet Archive.
2024 July 23
The Modern Word: The following sections of the “Borges Works” page have been revised: Collaborations with Bioy Casares and Collaborations with Others. Images have been repaired and updated, entries have been expanded, new books have been added, and wherever appropriate, links have been provided to the Internet Archive.
2024 July 21
The Modern Word: The following sections of the “Borges Works” page have been revised and expanded: Fictions and Artifices and Nonfiction. Images have been repaired and updated, new books have been added, and wherever appropriate, links have been provided to the Internet Archive.
2024 July 4
The Modern Word: The Franz Kafka biography has been revised and restored to The Modern Word. Also restored, an updated version of the site Introduction. By the end of the summer, I hope to have the remainder of “Das Schloss” online. My next task, however, is to repair all the broken image links on the Borges site.
2024 June 26
The Modern Word: A review of Samuel Barber’s Complete Songs by Brilliant Classics has been added to the Brazen Head’s Samuel Barber page. Furthermore, all the Barber pages have been updated, with over a dozen new recordings added. (Apparently, the Finnegans Wake-inspired song Nuvoletta has become quote popular!) This completes my summer update of the Brazen Head—all the broken links and images have been repaired. (Borges is next.)
2024 June 22
The Modern Word: The page on Pierre Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata has been updated and revised to include the recent publication of Antiphonie. If you haven’t heard this musical labyrinth inspired by Mallarmé’s Livre and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, now is the time—over 10 new recordings have been profiled, many with links for easy streaming.
2024 June 21
The Modern Word: All the composers featured in Joyce and Music have been updated with new recordings and links.
2024 June 20
The Modern Word: A section on James Joyce’s “The Epiphanies” has been added to the Joyce Works pages.
2024 June 17
The Modern Word: Today was Berio Day! All the links on the Joyce-related Luciano Berio pages have been updated, with a few new recordings, links, and YouTube videos included.
2024 June 16
The Modern Word: Happy Bloomsday! The Brazen Head celebrated by updating and adding new material to the pages on Joycean composer Stephen Albert.
2024 June 15
The Modern Word: Hundreds of broken links have been repaired on the Brazen Head, with intact book cover images now in place. This includes the Joyce Audio—Biographies & Criticism section, which has received a few new entries, including the audiobook of Patrick Hasting’s Guide to Ulysses, and a YouTube “liberation” of the 1988 CD, Robert Anton Wilson On Finnegans Wake and Joseph Campbell. Next I’ll begin repairing the broken album covers in the “Music” section.
2024 June 14
The Modern Word: Over 25 books have been added to the General Joyce Criticism section, which has been re-organized to accommodate this recent outpouring of Joyce-related works. (The Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on you, Bloomsbury Academic!) Many of these additions feature links to reviews in the JJQ.
2024 June 13
The Modern Word: A page of Kafka Quotations has been added to what will soon be a restoration of “Das Schloss,” the Modern Word’s Kafka site.
2024 March 16
White Leviathan: Chapter 5 concludes with Encounter 7: Arrival at Katau Peidi.
2024 March 9
White Leviathan: Chapter 5 continues with Encounter 5: Trying-Out the Weird. The Quiddity meets a fellow traveler from Kingsport and receives a startling piece of cargo in Encounter 6: The Gam with the Persephone.
2024 February 25
White Leviathan: Chapter 5 continues. Encounter 3: The Offshore Grounds leads to an epic battle with a deranged sperm whale in Encounter 4: Raging Bull.
2024 January 14
White Leviathan: The brief Chapter 5 begins with Encounter 1: The Fourth of July. This is followed by the first sighting of the titular White Leviathan—Encounter 2: First Hunt for Mocha Dick.