I have a lot of love for Louis Armstrong so when I saw that the Paris Review was running a piece on his art, I immediately ordered myself a copy of the magazine. (Initial link via boing boing.) Here's a bit from the article:

When not pressing the valves on his trumpet or the record button on his tape recorder, Armstrong’s fingers found other arts with which to occupy themselves. One of them was collage, which became a visual outlet for his improvisational genius. The story goes that he did a series of collages on paper and tacked them up on the wall of his den, but Lucille, who had supervised the purchase and interior decoration of their house in Corona, Queens, objected. Armstrong decided to use his extensive library of tapes as a canvas instead, and the result is a collection of some five hundred decorated reel-to-reel boxes, one thousand collages counting front and back. The collages feature photographs of Armstrong with friends (like the snapshot captioned “Taken at Catherine and Count Basie’s swimming pool, at his birthday party, August 1969”) and with fans (Armstrong seems never to have refused a photo op or an autograph); congratulatory telegrams and clippings from reviews of his performances; a blessing from the Vatican (as reassembled by Louis, the first lines read: “Mr. and Mrs. Most Holy Father Louis Armstrong”); and cutouts from packages of Swiss Kriss herbal laxatives, which, judging from the label’s ubiquity in these pieces, were as much a staple of Armstrong’s daily life as playing the horn. Only occasionally do the collages indicate the musical content within; usually there is no correlation. Armstrong made generous use of various kinds of adhesive tape not only to attach images to each box but also to laminate, frame, or highlight them. The works are untitled and undated, but he was making them as early as the 1950s; in a letter from 1953 he wrote, “Well, you know, my hobbie (one of them anyway) is using a lot of scotch tape . . . My hobbie is to pick out the different things during what I read and piece them together and [make] a little story of my own.”

Apparently there is a book coming out next year that will include all of his work.

I've been reading a lot of Joyce Carol Oates's journals over the past few days and it is really interesting stuff. I'm not a huge fan of hers; she has written several short stories I've enjoyed but most of the books she discusses writing here I am not familiar with. (It's not that I'm anti-Oates, I just haven't got around to reading her novels.) But it's really unnecessary to know her titles in order to be intrigued by her as a writer. She is incredibly prolific as everyone always says but she works her butt off. At one point she mentions writing 18 pages in a single day and churns out a novel a year in the midst of a lot of short story, essay and review writing. The trick to her high output (although it's not really a trick) is that she so immerses herself in her work that it really becomes the primary focus of her creative mind - the book is everything and thus the book demands to be written. So she writes like crazy.

It's clear that Oates is not some obsessed freak though - she comments a lot about nature in her journals and teaching and meeting with friends. She also writes a lot about her husband which makes me wonder how she is doing since his recent death; they were clearly very close.

I try to write 2-3 pages a day, or if a chapter is completed then I will spend a day in careful revision. As Map is not a plot driven novel, it's easy to revise before moving on - most of the chapters standalone in one way or another anyway. I do remember writing much more than this though - I wrote my entire thesis in one month and that was almost a fever of writing in some ways. But it was before I had my son, or we had our own company, or there were books to review, etc.

It was a long time ago.

I admire Oates more and more from reading her journals; even if you are not a fan of her personally I think anyone who is interested in the writing life will find much of value in this volume.