Better Than Friday - 41 (Patreon)

Good morning everyone, hope you're all doing well. 

1. Book in the Pipeline - Margery Kempe by Robert Glück 

Another NYRB release, in part, about the Christian Mystic Margery Kempe.

She wrote her own book which is apparently the earliest surviving autobiography in English. I've never heard of her before.

Far from being a typical holy woman, Margery Kempe was married and mother of fourteen children. Moreover, she had been a woman of substance, even running a large brewery for a time. After turning to religion, she traveled thousands of miles around the known world on pilgrimages to distant lands.- From Amazon

Part of Margery Kempe's significance lies in the autobiographical nature of her book; it is the best insight available of a female, middle class experience in the Middle Ages. Kempe is unusual when compared to contemporaneous holy women, such as Julian of Norwich, because she was a laywoman. Although Kempe has sometimes been depicted as an "oddity" or a "madwoman," recent scholarship on vernacular theologies and popular practices of piety suggest she was not as odd as she might appear.[citation needed] Her Book is revealed as a carefully constructed spiritual and social commentary. Some have suggested that it was written as fiction, in order to explore the aspects of the society in which she lived in a believable way. The suggestion that Kempe wrote her book as a work of fiction is said to be supported by the fact that she speaks of herself as "this creature" throughout the text, dissociating her from her work.[18] However, this might equally be only a way of showing her humility, as a lowly creature of God.

- From Wikipedia

Glück's book, however, is definitely fiction.

Both the real book by Kempe and Glücks look fascinating. 

First published in 1994, Robert Glück’s Margery Kempe is one of the most provocative, poignant, and inventive American novels of the last quarter century. The book tells two stories of romantic obsession. One, based on the first autobiography in English, the medieval Book of Margery Kempe, is about a fifteenth-century woman from East Anglia, a visionary, a troublemaker, a pilgrim to the Holy Land, and an aspiring saint, and her love affair with Jesus. It is complicated. The other is about the author’s own love for an alluring and elusive young American, L. It is complicated. Between these two Margery Kempe, the novel, emerges as an unprecedented exploration of desire, devotion, abjection, and sexual obsession in the form of a novel like no other novel. Robert Glück’s masterpiece bears comparison with the finest work of such writers as Kathy Acker and Chris Kraus. 

- From Amazon

2. Lucretia My Reflection by The Sisters of Mercy 

Classic anthemic goth rock.

The soundtrack for the last party on earth. 

I'm still discovering great early stuff from them. 

3. A Rosier Crucifixion: The Erotic World of Henry Miller 

A compelling article to follow up the recent review I made of 'Black Spring'. 

4. An explanation of Covid-19 growth by a friend and Patron who is a Stanford Ph.D 

An informative video from a Data Scientist about the Coronavirus and his personal experience with it.

5. Learn a language 15 minutes a day? 

Yeah, probably not going to happen (much to my disappointment). 

A capsized boat as seen from a bridge in Portland