“The Carmel is a lovely little river. It isn’t very long but in its course it has everything a river should have. It rises in the mountains, and tumbles down a while, runs through shallows, is dammed to make a lake, spills over the dam, crackles among round boulders, wanders lazily under sycamores, spills into […]
“Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept […]
“Doc is the owner and operator of the Western Biological Laboratory. Doc is rather small, deceptively small, for he is wiry and very strong and when passionate anger comes on him he can be very fierce. He wears a beard and his face is half Christ and half satyr and his face tells the truth. […]
“The most important thing Karen carried into that place was the memory of Navidson. And Navidson was no different. Though it’s commonly assumed his last word was ‘care’ or the start of ‘careful.’ I would argue differently. I believe this utterance is really just the first syllable of the very name on which his mind […]
“In the end, he sought nothing less than to see the house exact its annihilating effects on his own being. Again quoting directly from The Criteria: ‘Navidson has one deeply acquired organizing perception: there is no hope of survival there. Life is impossible. And therein lies the lesson of the house, spoken in syllables of […]
“There are only 8,160 frames in Karen’s film and yet they serve as the perfect counterpoint to that infinite stretch of hallways, rooms and stairs. The house is empty, her piece is full. The house is dark, her film glows. A growl haunts that place, her place is blessed by Charlie Parker. On Ash Tree […]
“I guess one obvious option now is to just get ride of this thing, which if Lude’s right, should put an end to all my recent troubles. It’s a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. Not all complex problems have easy solutions; so says Science (so warns Science); and so Trenton once […]
“I should be dead. Why am I still here? And as that question appears––concise, in order, properly accented––I see I’m holding onto the tray loaded with all those caps and bottles of black and purple ink. Not only that but I’m already walking as fast as I can through the doorway. The door is open […]
“In 1993 the journalist James Gorman wrote: I used to speak in a regular voice. I was able to assert, demand, question. Then I started teaching. At a university? And my students had this rising intonation thing? It was particularly noticeable on telephone messages. ‘Hello? Professor Gorman? This is Albert? From feature writing?’ I had […]
“With a little luck, you’ll dismiss this labor, react as Zampanò had hoped, call it needlessly complicated, pointlessly obtuse, prolix––your word––, ridiculously conceived, and you’ll believe all you’ve said, and then you’ll put it aside––though even here, just that one word, ‘aside’, makes me shudder, for what is ever really just put aside?––and you’ll carry […]