The Art of Tetman Callis

Bloomington, Illinois — There is a field of root vegetables next to the Fairfield Inn where Owen and I are staying tonight.  I don’t know what kind they are and it seemed less than wise to pull one and find out.  I’m in a new country and a main road runs by the field. There […]

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Springfield, Missouri — It’s just after 5:00 a.m.  I’ve been awake since before 4:00.  I lay in bed for over an hour, hoping I might get back to sleep, not believing it was likely I would get back to sleep, knowing I need as much rest as possible before today’s long drive through the Ozarks […]

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Springfield, Missouri — Green.  I’ve spent most of my life in the deserts of the southwestern United States and I always marvel at how green the landscape is nearly everywhere else I go.  And here in Springfield, where it rained heavily last night, it has just begun to rain again.  I hear the drops hitting […]

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Elk City, Oklahoma — The coffee maker in the motel room malfunctioned, giving off a wispy curling smoke such as might be seen in a horror movie and stinking up the room in a way John Waters might appreciate.  I’ve gone down to the lobby to get a cup of lobby coffee and have it […]

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Elk City, Oklahoma — Owen and I arrived just after 7:00 p.m. local time and secured lodgings at the Days Inn off Interstate 40 eastbound at  exit 38.  It was a good drive and fast, often at 70 mph in the 26-foot Penske rental.  The vegas of northwest New Mexico were green from recent rains.  […]

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“It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)

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“It’s not crime and criminals that are destroying the world; it’s petty little emotions like envy, all these silly squabbles that end up with good people hating one another.” — Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya (trans. Schmidt)

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This is almost certainly my final routine post from my desktop computer here in the home my wife, Susan, and I keep in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Later today, I will shut down and pack away this machine.  Today and tomorrow, my adult son, Owen, and I load up the rental truck with all Susan’s and […]

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“The more I write, the more I think it’s not a matter of old forms and new forms: what’s important is to write without thinking about forms at all.  Just write and pour out whatever’s in your heart.” — Anton Chekhov, The Seagull (trans. Schmidt)

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“Sometimes people get obsessive about things, ideas, like a man who spends all his time, let’s say, thinking about the moon, staring at the moon.  Well, I have a moon of my own.  All I think about day and night is having to write.  I have to write, I have to.  I finish one story, […]

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“No sooner had the fighting of World War II ended than the Cold War began, and the United States seemed plunged once more into the anxiety that had prevailed while the guns were firing. A manipulated terror of godless Communism, coupled with an even greater one of nuclear war, made the 1950s a decade in […]

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“Every second something might happen that will cause you such suffering that you’ll never have enough tears.” — Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (trans. Goldstein)

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“Most people, in daily currency, use words in what they think of as a fairly literal way. Consequently they are made uneasy if a writer does not use them similarly. They expect a novelist to know more words than they do, and to employ them with greater expertise than they can. Basically though, they expect […]

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“I exist only when I am writing. I am nothing when I am not writing. I am fully a stranger to myself, when I am not writing. Yet when I am writing, you cannot see me. No one can see me. You can watch a director directing, a singer singing, an actor acting, but no […]

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“Over the years I have found that many Americans—from readers to reviewers to critics to academics to publishers and of course to politicians—take pride in knowing almost nothing about the rest of the world. Academics will probably bristle at this thought but, at least in relation to literature, all you have to do is look […]

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“A foundation will be far more likely to fund third-rate poets reading to beleaguered schoolchildren than fund the publication of some of the most important foreign literary works. Foundations of course are forever patting themselves on their backs for being so diverse and multi-cultural, but they intend these sentiments to have a very limited application.” […]

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“There are no gestures, words, or sighs that do not contain the sum of all the crimes that human beings have committed and commit.” – Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (trans. Goldstein)

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“There is only one sort of love, but there are a thousand different copies.” — Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)

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“If there is a pure love, exempt from the mixture of our other passions, it is that which is concealed at the bottom of the heart and of which even ourselves are ignorant.” — Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)

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“There are no accidents so unfortunate from which skillful men will not draw some advantage, nor so fortunate that foolish men will not turn them to their hurt.”  — Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)

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“The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction […]

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“Those who apply themselves too closely to little things often become incapable of great things.” — Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)

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“Most artists fail in what they try to do.  The reasons range from an encyclopedia of faults and mistakes to the myriad variants of bad luck.  The fact is too melancholy to tempt much contemplation.” – Peter Schjeldahl, “Flower Power”

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