May 21

My resistance to an enterprise entitled Diary of a Wombat is going to be non-existent:

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/2010/05/diary-of-a-wombat/

The poet Dante Gabriel; Rossetti had a couple of pet wombats, as well as other exotics; after the second one died, he had it stuffed and placed in his entrance hall.

Television Obscurities uncovers I Love Lucy comic books from the Fifties:

:http://www.tvobscurities.com/2010/05/bookshelf-i-love-lucy-comics-3/

The Classic TV History Blog has an excellent two-part interview with character actor Jason Wingreen:

I had the reputation of being able to play different characters with different accents, different situations.  I’m not blowing my own horn, but I was a talented actor.  And easygoing.  Very easy to work with.  I gave nobody any trouble at all.  I did what I was told, or asked to do, with a smile and a shoeshine.  To quote Willy Loman.

http://classictvhistory.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/an-interview-with-jason-wingreen-part-one/

http://classictvhistory.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/an-interview-with-jason-wingreen-part-two/

I jumped when I saw the photograph at the top of Part One, recognizing it immediately as a shot from "A Stop at Willoughby" on The Twilight Zone:

Richard Beck at n+1 discusses how quality series television became a favored form of the Americxan intellectual class, citing a Joyce Carol Oates article about Hill Street Blues in TV Guide that I well remember:

http://nplusonemag.com/treasure-island

I disagree with Beck about Mad Men, which he dislikes but which I think is every bit the equal of the other shows he discusses. Otherwise, interesting essay.

Stephe Harrop at the London Theatre Blog is glad to finally have the chance to see Shakespeare's Henry VIII on stage:

http://www.londontheatreblog.co.uk/henry-viii/

In a literary list that is truly off the beaten track, Rachel Trezise enumerates her top ten Welsh underground novels. I want to buy and read all of these:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/17/rachel-trezise-welsh-underground-novels

Michael Orthofer and Steve Donoghue, two of the most dependable critics in the literary blogosphere, are both taken with the English translation of Alexandros Papadiamantis's grim 1903 Greek novel The Murderess:

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/greece/papadiaa.htm

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/2010/05/the-murderess/

The Basque artist Javier Riano has a way with interior architecture -- I can't think of too many artists who can spook me out with a stairwell:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=38153

http://www.gabarronfoundation.org/Default.aspx?tabid=2207

Among notables born on this date are novelist Suzanne Lilar (French Belgium), science fiction novelist Manly Wade Wellman, poets Alexander Pope, Robert Creeley, and Tudor Arghezi (Romania), painters Albrecht Durer and Henri Rousseau, scientist Andrei Sakharov, comedian and U.S. Senator Al Franken, trumpeter Maurice Andre, oboist Heinz Holliger, jazz pianist Fats Waller, and actors Robert Montgomery and Raymond Burr. No less than wombats, I am exceedingly fond of Albrecht Durer's famous hare: