(Hat tip to Nicole Peeler, via Twitter)

It took quite an effort to find a excerpt tame enough to post (after all, we are a family site… I guess):

I would be delighted to feel my flesh tingling under your hand . Do you know what I mean, Nora dear? I wish you would smack me or flog me even. Not in play, dear, in earnest and on my naked flesh. I wish you were strong, strong, dear, and had a big full proud bosom and big fat thighs.  I would love to be whipped by you, Nora love! I would love to have done something to displease you, something trivial even, perhaps one of my rather dirty habits that make you laugh: and then to hear you call me into your room and then to find you sitting in an armchair with your fat thighs far apart and your face deep red with anger and a cane in your hand. To see you point to what I had done and then with a movement of rage pull me towards you and throw me face downwards across your lap. Then to feel your hands tearing down my trousers and inside clothes and turning up my shirt, to be struggling in your strong arms and in your lap, to feel you bending down (like an angry nurse whipping a child’s bottom) until your big full bubbies almost touched me and to feel you flog, flog, flog me viciously on my naked quivering flesh!! - (To Nora, 13 December 1909)

Read more.

(Hat tip: Rolando Andrés Ramos via Twitter)

The Internet Public Library has a compilation of the best-selling books of all time, with The Bible and Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book duking it out for the top spot.

The fiction list is interesting, however, as it represents an interesting mix of classic literature and more than a few pop-culture page-turners:

Bach, Richard. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
Blatty, William. The Exorcist
Benchley, Peter. Jaws
Caldwell, Erskine. God’s Little Acre
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird
McCullough, Colleen. The Thorn Birds
Metalious, Grace. Peyton Place
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind
Orwell, George. 1984, Animal Farm
Puzo, Mario. The Godfather
Robbins, Harold. The Carpetbaggers
Salinger, J.D. Catcher in the Rye

Read deeper.

Tina Samuels over at Words Come Undressed has compiled some interesting quotes about that legendary pairing: writers and coffee. My favorite:

“Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It’s the only thing ‘real’ men do that doesn’t seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it’s on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw” – Erma Bombeck

Check out the entire collection here.

If you like your hardboiled characters hardcore and aren’t squeamish about the seedier side of human nature, Thuglit is just the online literary magazine for you.

Now on their 31st issue (with the other 30 conveniently archived), Thuglit oozes with irreverence and violence while offering crisp and evocative fiction from a diverse stable of writers.

Check it out.

Another great comprehensive site dedicated to a major writer’s life and works: The Walt Whitman Archive.

With beautifully scanned pages from original editions, works shown with poet’s edits included, and a wealth of letters, criticism, images and sound, the site is a wonderland for Whitman fans.

It’s also a living and breathing work in progress, with a brand new grant subsidizing the editing of the poet’s Civil War writings.

Check it out.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive websites ever created for a single author. Mag4.net’s Arthur Rimbaud site is as comprehensive as any I’ve ever seen, which is not surprising given that its creator (who simply goes by the name Catherine) began work on it 11 years ago. Originally inspired by Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Rimbaud in “Total Eclipse”, it’s a quantum leap from any notion of a “fan site”.

Packed not only with the poetry and biographical material you’d expect, the site also features several letters (including two to Verlaine and one to his mother), his renunciation of the charges against Verlaine, galleries of photos and of the poet’s original artwork, an excellent bibliography and a treasure trove of links.

Definitely a keeper for any Rimbaud fan— and an entire education in the poet’s life and works for the newly curious.

Courtesy of the fine folks at PBS, it’s the Mark Twain Scrapbook:

Mark Twain was a lifelong creator and keeper of scrapbooks. He took them with him everywhere and filled them with souvenirs, pictures, and articles about his books and performances. But in time, he grew tired of the lost glue, rock-hard paste, and the swearing that resulted from the standard scrapbook process. So, he came up with the idea of printing thin strips of glue on the pages to make updates neat and easy to do. In 1872, he patented his “self-pasting” scrapbook, and by 1901, at least 57 different types of his albums were available. It would be his only invention that ever made money.

Inspired by his invention, this interactive scrapbook tells Twain’s life story through a collection of texts, photos, illustrations, and clippings from his day. To begin exploring, click one of the chapters…

Courtesy of Bukowski.net, Charles Bukowski’s first published short story, “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip”, from the March-April 1944 issue of “Story”. A taste:

I WALKED AROUND outside and thought about it. It was the longest one I ever got. Usually they only said, “Sorry, this did not quite make the grade” or “Sorry, this didn’t quite work in.” Or more often, the regular printed rejection form.

But this was the longest, the longest ever. It was from my story “My Adventures in Half a Hundred Rooming Houses.” I walked under a lamppost, took the little slip out of my pocket and reread it -

Dear Mr. Bukowski:
Again, this is a conglomeration of extremely good stuff and other stuff so full of idolized prostitutes, morning-after vomiting scenes, misanthropy, praise for suicide etc. that it is not quite for a magazine of any circulation at all. This is, however, pretty much a saga of a certain type of person and in it I think you’ve done an honest job. Possibly we will print you sometime, but I don’t know exactly when. That depends on you.

Sincerely yours,
Whit Burnett

Oh, I knew the signature: the long “h” that twisted into the end of the “W,” and the beginning of the “B” which dropped halfway down the page.

I put the slip back in my pocket and walked on down the street. I felt pretty good.

Here I had only been writing two years. Two short years. It took Hemingway ten years. And Sherwood Anderson, he was forty before he was published.

I guess I would have to give up drinking and women of ill-fame, though. Whiskey was hard to get anyhow and wine was ruining my stomach. Millie though - Millie, that would be harder, much harder.

Read on…