July 16, 2012

Letters were no longer brought by the postman

“…letters were no longer brought by the postman; after he had fallen twice from Maurice‘s ill-secured gangplank, the whole morning’s mail soaked in the great river’s load of rubbish, the GPO, with every reason on its side, had notified the Reach that they could no longer undertake deliveries. They acknowledged that Mr. Black, from Lord Jim, had rescued their employee on both occasions and they wished to record their thanks for this. The letters, since this, had had to be collected from the boatyard office, and Laura felt this made it not much better than living abroad. ” –from Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

May 1, 2012

In understanding that we are all, in our essence, alike…

“In understanding that we are all, in our essence, alike, the novel view attributes a greater respect to the enemy and the near certainty that he believes what he is doing to be right. This is not to say that the enemy is right, but that forgoing blanket conceptions of evil and conceding at least this bit of respect leads to a more realistic and ultimately more practical strategic assessment of the force that we should or should not be fighting.” –Noah Richler, from What We Talk About When We Talk About War

April 13, 2012

The fourth day she reduced the teabags inside the pot to one

“The fourth day she reduced the teabags inside the pot to one, and he commented the tea had gone very weak, as though it was being controlled by the weather or an outside force. He did not lift the lid of the pot, because he was not accustomed to doing such things for himself.” –from Anakana Schofield’s Malarky

January 26, 2012

More about stories (and Skippy Dies)

“Maybe instead of strings it’s stories that things are made of, an infinite number of tiny vibrating stories; once upon a time they all were part of one big giant superstory, except it got broken up into a jillion different pieces, that’s why no story on its own makes any sense, and so what you have to do in a life is try and weave it back together, my story into your story, our stories into the other people’s we know, until you’ve got something that to God or whoever might look like a letter or even a whole world…” –Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

November 23, 2011

What to expect

“They named me Ruth Frances Beatrice Brennan, and took me home. They days blended together, one into another with no distinctions. The crying, the feeding, the changing, the chafing, the washing, the soothing, the burping, the singing, the sleeping, the waking. As new parents, James and Elspeth were surprised by their fatigue, as well as my dismissal of it. If someone had told them what to expect (and no one had), they hadn’t taken it in, and now, rather than forging ahead, they were rolling and rolling.

Sometimes Elspeth hung over me with smears of purple under her eyes, the skin there loose and fine, like something that would tear easily. She begged me to understand, though she knew she asked too much of me. Just as I asked too much of her, and him, and they of each other. James formed a habit of going to get things before they were needed, because it made him feel helpful and also allowed him to escape, just briefly, what he’d never expected to have to endure.” –Kristen den Hartog, And Me Among Them

November 12, 2011

Time passes for the curators

“As a scholar of a historical science I was accustomed to seeing the events of the past unfold before me like a parade. But I had thought of myself as a bystander, timeless. How ironic for me, the time traveller, to suddenly realize at the edge of a contemporary archeological exacavation that I was simply another event in the parade. And that time passes for curators, as well as for the things they study”. Dr. Peter L. Storck, “Passing into History”, ROM Magazine, Fall 2011 cc. Joan Didion, Blue Nights

September 7, 2011

Upon my word…

“‘…The women one meets– what are they but the books one has already read? You’re a whole library of the unknown, the uncut.” He almost moaned, he ached from the dept of his content. “Upon my word, I’ve a subscription.”‘ –Henry James, The Wings of the Dove

July 23, 2011

"A good democratic system is polyphonic…"

“A good democratic government is polyphonic. It doesn’t speak with a unified voice but contains numerous ones of genuine power and high pitch that aren’t under the sway of a central conductor. The idea of real competition within an elected government is the great development of the parliamentary system.

This sometimes produces ugly dissonance – as we saw in Washington this month as the many competing voices of Congress and the White House nearly disagreed their country into bankruptcy – but it’s crucial to have laws and structures that allow competing claims to power among different groups of elected officials. When I hear people calling for “consistency” in government policies, I worry: The best and least corruptible systems are those that produce the least consistency.”– Doug Saunders, “The Week the Yanks saved the Brits”

July 13, 2011

The world was upside down

“‘I don’t know why you’re laughing,’ said Aunt Irene. ‘I don’t see anything to laugh about. Everything strikes me as rather worrying.’

‘I’ll make a cuppa tea,’ said Mrs. O’Connor. She made terrible tea, very slimy, strong and tooth-stripping, but there was no denying its restorative powers.

‘If it does this to one’s cups,’ said Aunt Irene when Mrs. O’Connor had gone home to make tea for her boys, ‘what must it be doing to the lining of one’s stomach?’ She rubbed at the stained inside of the porcelain teacup. ‘I can’t be too rough,’ she said. ‘All its little gilt flowers will come off. They were designed for China tea. No one ever imagined Mrs. O’Connor would cross their path.’

The world was upside down. On the whole, this pleased Aunt Irene as much as it angered Mrs. Mason. It was more interesting that way, but it was hard on the porcelain.”– from The 27th Kingdom by Alice Thomas Ellis

July 8, 2011

She could see that you might consume babies

“‘Why did the nuns expel you?” Kyril asked, venturing a little further, his head bent in an attitude so suggestive that Aunt Irene felt that, if he had been a stranger and addressing her, she would have emptied the orange pekoe over him. Sometimes she was so afraid for him with his reckless offensiveness that she felt sympathy for Focus’ [the cat] mother who, finding that the world had intruded and that strange human adults had fondled her kittens, had eaten the better part of the litter and was starting on Focus when he was rescued by Aunt Irene’s friend and thereafter raised on tinned milk dealt out by an old fountain-pen tube. She could see that you might consume babies when they were sweet enough to eat. At least you would know where they were. She worried about Kyril all the time, going about as he did in a world of fire and water, sudden concussions, cold steel and heights and depths, and taking so little care.” —The 27th Kingdom, Alice Thomas Ellis