From the daily archives:

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Reeboks in heaven

by Frank Paynter on April 28, 2007

“In matters of art, ‘avant garde’ means little more than conforming to some daring philistine fashion, so, when the curtain opened, Hugh was not surprised to be regaled with the sight of a naked hermit sitting on a cracked toilet in the middle of an empty stage.”

Awkward American Hugh Person is sent to Switzerland to interview R., a novelist represented by the Publishing firm Person works for. He meets and falls in love with sensuous, sullen Armande, and their odd courtship and marriage, coupled with R.’s literary observations, shape the events of the novel. Diaphanous, dream-like, fleeting, Transparent Things explores the interaction between memory and observation in a delicate yet precise style.

“Once more he has managed to shape a formless, potentially threatening reality into a precise and transparent work of literary art while continually demonstrating for the benefit of attentive and imaginative readers the exact means employed for bringing about this transformation.”
Simon Karlinsky

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Misapprehension

by Frank Paynter on April 28, 2007

This afternoon while I was mulching some sapling evergreens and the dog was wandering around collecting ticks to deposit later in the house when her Frontline repellent finally forced them from her thick, concealing fur, I heard a frightening roar. From far up the road came the sound of a high-end race car, a throbbing drum beat of bass notes resonant in its mighty pistons, tuned exhaust crackling as it shifted up through the gears, the volume increasing as it approached. I didn’t think those things were allowed on the public highway. It fairly screamed as it flew past. Shrubbery screened me from the road and the road from me, so I had to ask Beth, “Just what the hell was that?”

“Three hogs and a rice-burner,” she replied.

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bee cooties

April 28, 2007

There’s a fungus afoot. At least that’s what the LA Times reports on the bee Collapsed Colony Disorder problem. Like all things ecological, it’s dangerous to draw conclusions about first order causes and how to address them. Naturally, once the problem of a fungus is identified, a fungicide is proposed as the [...]

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To the librarians

April 28, 2007

Abandon hierarchy all ye who enter here.
David Weinberger’s new book, Everything is Miscellaneous, is dedicated to the librarians. It could be likened to a lumberjack’s chain saw tearing down every Aristotelian tree in the forest, but that would probably be wrong. It would probably also be wrong to assert that the miscellaneous nature of [...]

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