A mid-week, off-radar publicity round-up:
William Davies King, author of Collections of Nothing, continues to write about collecting and one of his other obsessions, Eugene O’Neill, in an essay just published in ZYZZYVA, the journal of West Coast writers and artists. “Hammerman’s O’Neill” profiles the prodigious O’Neill collector, Dr. Harley Hammerman. Read the essay here, and check out an excerpt from King’s book here.
King may be obsessed with collecting and Eugene O’Neill, but the king of obsession around here is Lennard Davis, author of Obsession: A History. Listen to a podcast with the author from Psychjourney.
And if the rise of podcasts have you reminiscing about the good old days around the wireless, listen in on Inquiry as Marcel Chotkowski Lafollette discusses her book Science on the Air: Popularizers and Personalities on Radio and Early Television.
And speaking of radio, retired Army Lt. Col. John Nagl, author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam and author of a foreword to The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, dropped by NPR’s All Things Considered to discuss a “new spirit” of determination to eradicate counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.
Finally, a shout-out to Cristina Henríquez, the former occupant of the very chair from which your humble correspondent now dispatches, with wit and verve, these ephemeral musings. Cristina, author of a short-story collection, Come Together, Fall Apart and a debut novel, The World in Half, out next year, is the next contestant in The Books of the States project at Omnivoracious. Her list of essential Texas books is as comprehensive as the state is large. And here’s to hoping that some of her magic is left in this humble office chair, from where I bid you happy reading.