December 2011
12 posts
3 tags
Papa
I allowed myself to daydream, and wasted time wondering what Hemingway would have done if it had been he who had seen the footprints in the sand.
First of all, by looking at the prints he would have guessed some things about the person who had arrived through the sandy inlet. He certainly would have been able to tell the person’s sex, age, character, or mood: reading tracks was an art he...
2 tags
Character and character
On the way to my place of work I spent an uncomfortable quarter of an hour thinking over what She Who Must Be Obeyed had said about me having to be a “character.” It seemed an unfair charge. I drink Chateau Thames Embankment because it’s all I can afford. It keeps me regular and blots out certain painful memories, such as a bad day in Court in front of Judge Graves, an old...
Reasons
Love me not for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face,
Nor for any outward part,
No, nor for a constant hear;
For these may fail or turn to ill,
So thou and I shall sever;
Keep, therefore, a true woman’s eye,
And love me still but know not why—
So hast thou the same reason still
To doat upon me ever!
Anonymous, 1609
1 tag
Party
Now, as I have no doubt you know, when Stiffy celebrates, he celebrates. Exactly how and where he did it on this occasion, I couldn’t tell you. He is a bit vague about it himself. He seems to have collected a gang of sorts, for he can distinctly recall, he tells me, that from the very inception of the affair he did not lack for friends: and they apparently roamed hither and thither,...
2 tags
Hangover, once more
The butler coughed in rather an unpleasant and censorious manner.
“Did your lordship exceed last night?”
“Certainly not.”
“Did your lordship imbibe champagne?”
“The merest spot.”
“A bottle?”
“It may have been a bottle.”
“Two bottles?”
“Yes. Possibly two bottles.”
The butler coughed again.
...
2 tags
plus ça change
“[I]f a novel is reviewed well in Time or the New Yorker or Newsweek etc. I am likely to order it sight unseen (often to be badly fooled, of course)… . There is something wrong with the book business. The publisher is probably far the best judge of books there is, but he simply cannot put them over. Either they sell themselves (in which case he can plunge on advertising and build them up...
3 tags
Hangover
Angelica Bullock: What’s that?
Godfrey: Pixie remover.
Angelica Bullock: Oh, then you see them, too.
Godfrey: They’re old friends.
Angelica Bullock: Yes, but you mustn’t step on them. I don’t like them, but I don’t like to see them stepped on.
Godfrey: I’ll be very careful. I wouldn’t hurt them for the world… . You must never be rough with them....
2 tags
Preferences
However slight the terrestrial contact between Dante and Beatrice or Petrarch and Laura, time changes the proportion of things, and in later days it is preferable to have fewer sonnets and more conversation.
From George Eliot’s Middlemarch
2 tags
Vantages
He was at present too well acquainted with disaster to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is below the level of tragedy except the passionate egoism of the sufferer.
From George Eliot’s Middlemarch
2 tags
A relationship
{Photo by rocketlass.}
she was his own best critic she despised his poetry which pleased jim to no end if, on the other hand, we were only to take into account mae’s emotions for jim a brief grocery list might suffice: he happened to be available was modestly capable she was bored what’s more she always wanted to spend the summer on a boat let us just say they spent the majority...
2 tags
Patterns
An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination,...