Les Freres Bruckman by Karel Bruckman

Les Frères Bruckman (1923)

Karel Bruckman (Dutch, 1903-1980)

Watercolor

25 x 18 in

A gift from Karel Bruckman to his twin brother Lodewijck upon his departure for America.

Fritz Peters near Utica, 1950

"What are we thinking about when we drive so fast over some of the most lovely countryside to be found anywhere?" he asked himself.  "Where are we all going?"

While researching what was to become his third novel, The Descent, Fritz Peters visited with friends in Clinton, near Utica, New York. His novel of America's roads and highways, whose final cataclysmic scene takes place in New Mexico, started its life with Peters observing and interviewing travelers along Route 20 in New York. Richard H. Costa composed a portrait of the author with accompanying photos by Dante O. Tranquille for the December 10, 1950 Sunday edition of The Utica Observer-Dispatch. The original photo negatives used in the story and two candid shots of the subject and the author are now part of a private collection.

Costa was a columnist-reporter for The Utica Observer-Dispatch in the 1950s, taught at Utica College in the 1960s and was later a professor of English at Texas A&M University.

Tranquille was a central New York photographer who also worked for many years as the staff photographer for The Utica Observer-Dispatch. Two of his photos were selected for 1949's The Exact Instant, a show of the 100 best news photographs of the century at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Fritz Peters uses a wire recorder to make notes
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0008]

Fritz Peters in the kitchen
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0009]

Fritz Peters with American, English and paperback editions of his first novel,
The World Next Door
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0010]

Fritz Peters leaving cabin 5 to begin research
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0004]

Fritz Peters leaving cabin 5 to
begin research (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0004a]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0003]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0003a]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0001]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0001a]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0002]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0002a]

Fritz Peters interviews Mrs. James Erskine, proprietor of the
Madison Motor Court, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0005]

Fritz Peters interviews Mrs. James
Erskine, proprietor of the Madison
Motor Court, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0005a]

Fritz Peters correcting galley proofs of his second novel, Finistère
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0007]

Fritz Peters at the piano
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0006]

Fritz Peters and Richard Hauer Costa discuss The World Next Door
December 5, 1950  [cat 3899-0001]

Fritz Peters reads Richard Hauer Costa's notebook
December 5, 1950  [cat 3899-0002]

These images originally appeared in Gallery 2 on FritzPeters.info, December 21, 2006. 

Meditation N.33 by Alexej von Jawlensky

Meditation N.33 (1935)

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941)

Oil on paper mounted on cardboard

20.5 x 13.5 cm

Im Obersteg Collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel

"My art in the last period has all been in small format, but my paintings have become even deeper and more spiritual, speaking truly through colour. Feeling that because of my illness I would not be able to paint very much longer, I worked like a man obsessed on these little 'Meditations . And now I leave these small but, to me, important works to the future and to people who love art."

Alexej von Jawlensky 

JD by Mark Merlis

Madison : Terrace Books, 2015

Jonathan Ascher was a radical writer from the 1960s, who over the years has been largely forgotten. When Philip Marks inquires about access to Ascher's papers, it sets his widow Martha on a journey of discovery where she finds the husband she hardly knew.

Having simply sent all of her husbands papers to an archive after his death, she had no idea what might be found there. Combining large excerpts from Jonathan's journals from the 60s and 70s with Martha's present-day reactions, Merlis weaves a complex family drama in which she discovers her husband's bisexuality and realizes that she really knew nothing of his relationship with their son.

The novel is set in the 1960s literary scene of New York. In an interview with Lambda Literary, Merlis acknowledges that he has used actual writers from the time as jumping off points for some of the characters of the novel, but is quick to point out that they are literally that - jumping off points, not biographical sketches of the actual people. The source for Jonathan Ascher is Paul Goodman. Gore Vidal was immediately obvious in the character of Edgar Villard - no doubt a nod to Edgar Box, Vidal's 1950s literary pseudonym used during his exile for having published The City and Pillar.

While some will find parts of the story shocking, those who have read Paul Goodman's Parent's Day (1951) will see that both Goodman's life AND writing influenced this story.