"The Lucy left Plymouth Harbor under steam (somewhere below deck—Lenox suspected it was in the orlop, but couldn't feel sure—men were shoveling coal as if their lives depended on it) about an hour later."
"Rafinesque perfected his variant of this honorable philosophy while botanizing in the literal backyards of my childhood, examining ruderal plants I've known all my life, and so I have appropriated it from him, with minor tweaks."
John Jeremiah Sullivan, quoted in "Reality Effects" by James Wood, p 136 of the December 19 & 26, 2011 issue of The New Yorker
"Failing to be uplifted by white columns or the vertical thrust of the hall's backbone, he dwelled instead on how the opening of the brise-soleil, the structure above the building so reminiscent of a whale's tail just before a long submersion, left those inside both exposed—and trapped."
"In the middle of the final series—1st sefirot, fortress, sacri-fly, infold, purl, 2nd sefirot, j-ladder (5) —Clef felt the alien tug.
(5) Recent additions to sleight vocabulary have come from varied disciplines. Hands have reenvisioned structures from molecular biology, Kabbalah, psychoanalysis, physics, Vodou, baseball, astronomy, rock art, the I Ching, chemistry, and knitting."
"There was no reply to his question, however, and he went back to reading, occasionally pausing to sip the hot negus that had gone lukewarm as he worked."
I didn't know the sense of "schoolmaster" 'til now.
As in: "At his school, Harrow, one of the beaks from his house, Druries (where Lord Byron had been, not to mention Lord Palmerston, who had died only a year before), had noticed Lenox's height and asked him to come row for the house team."
"But age comes quickest and most irremediable to mechanical things. The life of a sparking-plug is a fierce tropical existence of days only. No healing leucocytes rush to the aid of a cracked cylinder, nor anastomosing tributaries expand to carry the life-blood of a choked feed-pipe."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, pp 279-280 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
"Saturday poked them with his fingers, and as he did so, a line or two shone brightly in the quick fire. 'The corposants burnt blue on every mast,' he read."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 129 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
"Joan Benbow, driving ambitiously, had watched her ball land, leap forward in a series of diminishing arcs, and come to rest in Hibbett's Hole. (Hibbett was a Victorian golfer, one of John Company's colonels, who died in harness, his enlarged spleen bursting almost simultaneously with a good niblick in the bunker now called after him.)"
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 94 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
"They might be charming fellows, of course. Great, noisy children, now laughing full-heartedly, now piteously seeking comfort and dimly knowing in their wise Slave hearts—were they Slavs?—that no one on earth could comfort them. Children of the steppes who would never grow up. But they grew beards, damn them. Great strouting bristle-patches of beards."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 55 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
"A lifelong sufferer from psychosomatic illnesses, he was also an enthusiastic supporter of homeopathy, iridology and vegetarianism, as well as professing an interest in astrology and dream interpretation."
Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James Attlee, p 250
"The lessons begin with exhaustive lists of colours — Gamboge, Indian Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre — with notes on combining them and colour wheels to show how they relate to one another."
Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James Attlee, p 62
"The suspended creatures turn their heads in the direction of the ghost in their midst. Gryphons and foxes and wyverns stare at him with glossy black eyes."
"I turn over twice, bed of embers, taken in by risk, violated by the speed of this century that has turned the heads of so many ardent worshipers of the State, God of Modern Times, on a quest for progress; Italy lulled by fascination for manufacture, signing pacts with flash-in-the-pan figures who ransacked their revolutionary period: sucked into the trajectory of bolstering the State and corrupting it in the process, creativity abandoned in sinecure and prebendary to set off in discovery of the proletarian era, with its canned announcements, lunar conquests, poetically inspired factories, how far we have drifted from that initial project that with millions in voice and deed made the country tremble, now returning to dissidence: Malevich, Mayakovsky, whose images and words capture oblivion, injecting us, in proletarian zeal, with the elixir that will purge us of our mystical vanity."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 237 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Those who can read shall read, and leave commentary to the others. To the first, joy is limited to reading, deciphering the sign; for the others the satisfaction and nourishment of their intelligence is achieved beyond: by interpretation, by unveiling, kashf."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 231 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Like the time in San'ā, at the close of an evening of qāt, relaxing mafraj brightened by polychrome windows, leaving at dawn, garden, circular openings, rings and acroteria, lacy cornices, walking to Hammam al-Maydān, dome and cistern, spray of water falling into concentric traces of itself, pool receiving reflection of sunbeam."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 215 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Apodyterium where women and adolescent girls shine, beauty assured, prey ravished the previous night from beyond the medina's boundary, in the new quarter, Rue de Serbie between the central market and the train station, behind the French Embassy, hair salon for well-born ladies, mistresses, and high society insiders, antechamber of the State, orgiastic pleasure palace, sex without despair, consume now, pay later, hairdresser as madam, inventing new couplings then undoing them, cashing in, or not, on the goodwill of bodies, we merge into sex for sale, soft bed for softer breasts, finding mother in woman, ignoring her fervor, offering ourselves up as products of exchange: generosity that reifies what little remains of the body, experimenting with the self as other; backsliding patriarchs, recalcitrant Messalinas: get back to the vengeful Bedouin Eros, squall that leaves nothing behind but a body now neutralized; women, split from your new alliances, surrender yourselves as demons even more debased than your city-dwelling sisters, take on the roving eye and daring of men: woman is an other."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 213 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Your family name, however, is another matter: originally Mu'addib, schoolmaster, teacher, prescriber of knowledge for its proper usage in society, dispenser of adab, a purveyor by name of good breeding and official culture, for the training of scribes and other executives of Arab power."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 207 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"May I suggest some samples of my remedies: I can tell you that sage loosens the tongue, kindles affection; and that hollowed-out aetites stones, when shaken like rattles, then placed on a woman in labor, will make for a quick delivery; likewise, rose of Jericho, macerated and then taken in liquid form, can also ease delivery for those of you ladies looking to bear children; donkey and horse hooves will likewise make birthing far less arduous, without exhaustion or excessive strain."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 199 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Labyrinth that lightens the oppressiveness squeezing the house's heart, that bruised organ; in the back, a trellis guides a tree, split Y-shaped to climb skyward on either side of a mashrabiya, stark monument."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 196 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"As for the male storytellers, let them learn a new trade, says Bakhta, chewing on the roasted thigh of a francolin hunted by our commandos around Tburba."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 186 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Here writing the text in Paris, swapping the anxiety of a vegetative state—progressing extravagantly—for kerria bouquets of text, great golden bunches naming the self, intermingled discipline of questioning, perfected into something other than a string of exiles, banishment, migration: rather, living in search of an excuse to sail off and prosper as a merchant in Ecuador, for example, fleeing one's own haunted existence, stating lopsidedly once again the struggle against the impossible, happy not to own up to oneself, namely, a destiny of dullness."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 175 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Fātima steps over those motionless bodies caught up in what they're protesting; following in Fātima's footsteps, I enter the high-ceilinged room, airy and light, slender columns, exaggerated by entasis, shaft topped by a capital, a typically Tunisoise interpretation of composite order, the capital itself topped by a tall impost."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 173 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"This Ba'adiyīn cupola, petals brightly salient on the calotte, a play of walls and openings, image of seashell and grape leaf, gathering their compartments into a central stem ending in the cupola faced with volutes, plaster worked into floral patterns, itself receptacle of figures, broken lines, curves and inter-curves, arabesque of line projected into space, perfect Almoravid accomplishment based upon the transposition of the principles of Islamic decoration, flora and planar geometry, to an architecture lending volume to flat motifs, rutilant container, a balance of breaches cleverly circulating blue sky: what uncertain solitude, what southerliness made possible this achievement by interpretation of register, audacity of one who emerges from the desert to impose the notion of unification, to attain an ideal to be formulated centuries later by a Borromini, a Guarini, to celebrate by monument the feast of Catholic power, triumphant propagator of faith after overcoming its schismatic trauma?"
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 160-161 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Fez shines with a light unattainable elsewhere. Some of its gatherings are truly worthy of admiration; I'll say nothing of the sacred intensity of the patron saint's mausoleum where votive offerings pile up, Moulay Driss, fātiha of the perverse, nor will I go on about the ironwork, paintings, the delicacy of its architectures, medersas and mosques more so than its palaces; and its artisans, manual or mental, certainly do take one to a higher plane: that weaver who took you in and spoke in inflammatory terms, that other host who took up residence in Fez after unraveling many of the mysteries and ambiguities hidden in the landscape that it occupies: think of the Swiss convert who pursued the tradition of certain nineteenth-century English alchemists, and who came to live in Fez, peace and quiet for anyone who believes in the possibility of social noninterference and the marginality to revive, through the body and the city, a tradition that has elsewhere disappeared."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 156-157 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"This street attracts dust, but I wouldn't trade it for the corniche road that makes the Nile unreal, flaming like some fake sunset. They built it a few years back: ever since Russians started arriving by the thousands to build the dam, the city has completely changed."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 140 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Spectacle of vengeance and loathing, I remember my youth and the hilqa tradition, circular gatherings at Rahbat al-Ghanam, the eating of a live scorpion, treacherously struggling between the swallower's teeth: I don't deserve the sting you've inflicted, he shouts! Secure in his rights and in his organism's immunity thanks to vast experience with venomous stings and bites, deadly to the uninitiated, he raged and bit down on the creature, hideous cracking, attenuated by the highly active theriac, an ancestral potion in use among those who fraternize with venom-dispensing reptiles: solidarity, philter of perils, syrup mixed with blood such that the body adapts unharmed to more lethal toxins."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 134 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"The bard's voice slows down and, after the unfathomable and contradictory flow of words, grows vindictive, blaming all the opposing currents that crisscross the hall, sound like light filtering through in equal measure, music of the heavens where each beam by its sound fools the ear or lulls it into sleep: various shafts of light play upon the exalted heads, upon the symbols of each guild in bright, primary colors, a dominant green, deep as inexpressible blue, a quiver running through the branches of a century-old cedar; red, of neither fire nor blood, the deep shade of habit, restful to the eye; white encircling waves, desert effluvia; black, to obscure the names on tombs by night at the unheralded hour of sanctification that weight upon shoulders, burnūs of lemony wool with a fringe curiously embroidered with bister bees, with glitter-tipped emeralds."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 126 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Outside, musicians, placard carriers, and guildsmen are jostling, intense crowd of a thousand hues, discrete voices intoning improvisations, each flowing autonomous, an effortless tarab, barely contained joy."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 124 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
""The Bride of the Book," a sūra that used to intrigue me because of its mysterious double sonority, its indefinitely repeated doubling, all in the name of the twofold, sun, star, moon, Orient, Occident, tree, seed, scale, weight: two of each kind, two seas divided by that which separates, barzakh, isthmus, two lands, twice Eden and two others beyond, two springs, ruby and pearl: and to coral I wanted to add carnelian."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 107 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"See the towering height of the Sultan Hassan mosque: there, the walls soar higher than cathedrals, shrinking the view of the sky captured by the confines of its courtyard, as defined by its four iwān: patch of blue so moving, unleashing the sobs so avidly yearned for, liberating the body."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 104 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"But what a mistake to have assembled limbs from fresh corpses to marinate in formaldehyde; you should have let them all macerate in a natron solution."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 92 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Could it be they've all left, slyly under cover of night, one of those mass departures encouraged by Zionist propaganda, emptying Tiznit or so many other Berber Ksours, such as Ifran in the Lesser Atlas Mountains, scree and tattoo on the rock face, heat like a furnace as we pass through the scattered argan trees, relatively dense prelude to the desert."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 91 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Into the leather-crafts souk, fragrance of hides tanned with sumac and nutgall, shadow striated with light, green the dominant color, metonymy of the city."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 86 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Politically shrewd, pleasure-seeking, a great friend to the hāra, he speaks the language of all-night revelry, respects Jewish customs and holidays, learned their poetry, recites Genesis in Aramaic, has uncovered the secrets of cabalistic interpretation, settles disputes regarding peripateticism of the Toledano and Hispanically Judeo-Arab sort, contests Avicenna's theory of emanation, combines discursive reason with the solemnity of the vagina, delights in elliptical and allusive language, lover of several Arab and Jewish entertainers, old-fashioned in taste and dress, a word lover, heartbreaker, keeper of the night, nocturnal wing, lunar matrix of riddles, noria cascading water: creaking waterwheel, wood imbibed, whispering trickle, jasmine and sweet summer, hatred of the occupier and what came before, neither is of us by body, by will: mockery of the cops and other prospective betrayers who, once they've agreed to kill, nonetheless seek to save face."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 84-85 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Ariana: settlement of Jews and Andalusian refugees cohabiting, light of white and blue, tidy streets, town squares like little stage sets, harlequin or Punch and Judy, graveyard poignantly earthbound, salt plain culminating in a shott, then sand and sea."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 80-81 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Everyone's at it, playing and parleying, circles within circles, sacred arcaded courtyard revived, hypostyle hall left to the more resourceful among them to revitalize prayer and ritual, the ten-arched loggia open to the street, where over here shkubba players keep an eye on cheaters, over there aces take all, somewhere the sound of dice and dominos, elsewhere a game of chess between two refined elderly gentlemen, pederasts surrounded by handsome boys making faces and gesticulating, sticking out tongues at any eye that lingers too long."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 78 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Living words of experience, officialdom laid bare, toothless mouths accustomed to chewing furtive speech in rage at a ghetto of words with its rules and laws, at the foundation of a cenacle in need of a Judas."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 75 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"The terrified dignitaries find no safety even when locked in their fortress houses, those not already abandoned and squatted in by legions of the rural poor who break in and settle by force in those now degraded monuments to another time, former palaces become oukalas, palatial slums."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 73-74 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=3951 says: "Oukala designates an in-town caravanserai, a type of hotel with rooms rented on a daily or weekly basis. Since the 1930s, the old city of Tunis, the Médina was strongly affected by a population shift; the intense rural migration and the departure of its urban gentry. Many private residences and monuments of the old city were "oukalaised", i.e., turned into multi-family dwellings that sometimes sheltered up to twenty households, often the less fortunate ones, in unacceptable sanitary conditions."
"What is this plan of yours, O carefree children born yesterday?—calm down, lest you share in the flames of hell, warns a slave to the dhikr, sanctimoniously reciting the names of Allah and turning in circles since the dawn of the century."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 72 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Immobile, I have journeyed through lands and encountered saints, archive of the world, from Tafilalet to Senoussi country, their white domes dazzling hilltop and desert; sacred lentisks, holy ash tree, blessed waters, healing springs, benediction and grace upon your relentless desire to be."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 69 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Cleansed of what she had interiorized as an inevitable defilement, an odor that she preferred not to name, her periodic chastity; bad, black blood, she would say, yet not so bad for less delicate nostrils, curve of the waist embellished, complexion deep brown, eyes lined in kohl, thick hair, wavy, shining, black; teeth white pearls, gums like rubies or coral, rubbed with siwak, Capparis sodata, fragrance and sap of chewed bark."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 48 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Different vision of bodies for sale, the Middle Atlas Mountains, desert's edge, mausim, harvest festival time, ritual prostitution at rural shrines, Moulay Ibrahim and elsewhere, outside the city, beyond the constraints of urbanity, theology, business, and all the various trades that organize the history of a city like Fez that extends its influence well beyond its borders, tending to centralize and cancel out all difference, incorporating the well-to-do of other towns and regions, Souss, Tafraout, Tetouan, Taroudant, even the intractable Marrakech, into a common and coherent project facilitating the exploitation of all bodies; ensuring, thanks to the new port inherited from the former colonizers, an open-door policy, and with the blessings of the royal Cherifian family, quashing any demonstration of local power unless this be tiny and fetishistic, confining its deviance to the mountainous backcountry."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 47-48 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Drag queen color and light, shake that thing, dime-store exotic, sailors in a port of call, gobbling down leftover couscous chilled by the pathetic eyes of a fiddler playing with neither melancholy nor hysteria, sawing away at his kamanjah, held in upright position on one knee: Tangiers, rival of continents, from its perch obsessed by two seas, tumbling seasons scatter into color-splashed crowds, throngs, dense in places: waning lives or former glories ravaged, shouldering the insignificance of what had been their worldly past, walking Pekingese on a leash, silk kimono revealing wrinkled, once-legendary thighs."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 44-45 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Writing mixes up the seasons, resolving the usual jumble of hot and cold, summer or winter: it reflects the messiness of the body more than any primordial law: it is chaos more than fiat, a battle of giants meant to obstruct the desire to invent oneself according to some divine order: it is with us, a descent, subterranean, underworld, regression, a groping toward totality: it is the gallery that cuts through the edifice end to end, the ambo breaking up the uniformity of narrative space."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 43 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"I won't say that what appears here are the words of a drunk. No, it's a dead man breathing life into his dulia, fragility that entangles the body and keeps it from any attempt to gather up all the inaccessible desire that blows away so jauntily on the breeze."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 41 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"As for the body, which our erudite voyeur pretends to ignore, it helps dig the ditch that will unearth the compromising roots of his clerical genealogy, the scholarly and social core of a family theology that realizes its golden age is now over, impervious to healthy criticism, manducation of the immutable precepts lying virtually undisturbed these past decades by those discreet stirrings that the surrounding vacuum causes to resonate until they finally swell into an event of sorts, a slender flame commensurate with our respectfully narrow national history."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 32 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Fragrance of sardine and harissa escape the grocer's shop, run by a Jerbi, stained gray smock, full moon face, zebiba on his forehead, mark of the pious who bow in prayer, greed, and acquisition of wealth, honing their instinctive sense of deprivation."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 31 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"And what of the analogy between sex and tree, the palm whose fermented nectar, a mere drop on the tongue, transports us to the bed of Eros, ardor impatient to flee the Saharan heat by immersion in the sweat and wax of this henna-tinted, finely tattooed body—a minbar on a hip, the Ka'aba on a thigh, winglets on her shaved pubis—bodies swelling together until the eye of the needle is opened and threaded, freeing you, putting you beyond limits: musk, floral essence, mingling of honeys?"
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 15 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Here-elsewhere: with deadly violence, a mixture of countries traveled, pieces of a life torn to shreds, a body scraped off the ground, appearance peculiar and untidy, blood stains; sweat, strife, toil: incursion of rebel assegais where the mountain rises up in fortification."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 6 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"At first it was a discrete clinamen, a slight deviation in the orderly descent of textual atoms—a not absent in one place and slipped in somewhere else."
Upstaged by Jacques Jouet, translated by Leland de la Durantaye, p 28
"To watch an actor in profile is a special pleasure for the connoisseur, all the more so when that actor is unknown, unexpected—and perhaps acting for the first and last time. Such an actor is, as Flavy would later remark, a hapax of the stage."
Upstaged by Jacques Jouet, translated by Leland de la Durantaye, p 18
"The headmaster turned to look again upon that which he could hardly abide: his life's work disintegrating in flames, with scant hope of phlogistic phoenix rising from its ashes."
"They are quite the opposite, their altricial nature demanding that they be nursed and nurtured for a time, or else they should die in the crib and the experiment come to naught."
""But a rather odd sort of Arcadia, orographically speaking, for the valley that would come to be known as Dingley Dell lies within what is known as the Allegheny Front—the dividing line between the eastern edge of the Allegheny Plateau escarpment…"
"…and the lower Allegheny Mountains," broke in Mr. Graham, excitedly."
"Artisans and tradesmen of the working class used Westminster when necessary to ply their trade within the weazen, dilapidated neighbourhood that now included Scadger's new domicile, and now and then lowly men in Scadger's impoverished league were driven by necessity to venture in the opposite direction to bear the sort of cold reception that had come to Scadger in Skettles' apothecary shop."
"We've tried large doses of every remedy that can be compounded: bromide of potassium, belladonna, chloride of aluminum, ferrous sulfate, quinine, tartar of arsenic, stramonium tobacco."
"In his youth he had wrestled upon a mat in the manner of the Greeks and had downed the largest buck in the eastern wood as was ever felled by bow and arrow—that record holding itself in perpetuity given the fact that hunting in both woods was now prohibited (though the law was broken now and again, almost exclusively by members of the congenitally-venatic Scadger clan)."
"As the family drew nearer that point which offered our best vantage, I saw that Muntle had identified the brother correctly; there was Harry and there was his wife Matilda, each drest in cast-off and multiply-mended clothing, the husband in an old worn and faded blue camlet coat that did not befit the warm season, dragging a large gunnysack, which, no doubt, contained most of his family's paltry possessions."
""Clive—the junior Clive and not the senior Clive who is presently chopping his way through the Amazon jungle—fears that I will go and tangle myself up with that fugitive elapid. They think I'm daft sometimes, these Pellers. Now I ask you, young man: if I were so precipitant as to go draping myself with poisonous fugitive elapids, would I have survived even half of my ninety-four years? Dear me. Now you are but a boy. Do you know what the word 'precipitant' means?""
From Merriam-Webster, a bryophite is "any of a division (Bryophyta) of nonflowering plants comprising the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts."
"Newman vowed to shorten his three-day journey by a full day—that is, if the weather remained clement and if his Dinglian shoes continued to hold themselves securely upon his feet and if he was not stopped along the way by any of those who wished to do him harm, and if—finally—he could navigate his way through the woods, where the sun did not shine, and trust the moss that generally grew on the northern side of the trees to act as his bryophitic compass."
"Alas, my sister-in-law had received in exchange for her maternal overture to the sulky and stone-faced thirteen-year-old a harsh rebuff, delivered in the girl's wonted insolent fashion: "Sit for several days betwixt you and your damask-nosed crony Miss Snigsworth? Watch the two of you tossing off your gallipots of grog as if it were some ancient nepenthe? Pardon me if I decline the invitation this week or any other week, Mama, but I would rather have sharp iron nails driven into my skull.""
"Nor did he—the grandson, on his mother's side, of a top-sawyer artisan of the Folkstone Furniture Works—behold a palmette upon the headboard, or a rinceau carving gracing the footboard."
I didn't know the "drinking glass filled to the brim" sense of it 'til now.
""Don't tell me you haven't had orange juice before."
"Only a couple of times. It's very expensive. It comes from the orangery and one drinks it only on very special occasions. I had a glass on my eleventh birthday. Can I have more? Can you bumper it?"
"Bumper it?" asked Evelyn, the mother, as she poured.
I knew about the bird but not about the cushions. As in:
"Mrs. Potterson nodded. "I had no idea that the Pyegraves were in such want of money. Why, he's the most prosperous draper and upholsterer in the Dell. Every squab upon which you sit was stuffed and sewn in his shop.""
"But who should not believe Dingley Dell to be the most beautiful vale in all the world (if one were to stand with the scarred and scabbed Southern Coal Ridge to one's back), with its fields of rye and oats and corn and mangold set in eye-pleasing checkerboard upon the agricultural northland, and plump rolling downs emeralding the valley's southern reach."
"As I crept along through the gloom, past engravings of wisent and aurochs and woolly rhinos, it occurred to me that I really had no clue what would drive someone to wriggle through a pitch-black tunnel to cover the walls with images that only another, similarly driven soul would see."
"Sleeping with the Enemy" by Elizabeth Kolbert, p 75 of the August 15th & 22nd, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
"Among his charges: two bookcases filled with real and fake books; twelve banquet chairs; three candelabra; a mesh of branches that entangles Touchstone; a wicker horse; a fake deer carcass; a stuffed boar; red grape juice that doubles as wine; three tins of lychee nuts, for Gloucester's eyeballs; a bicycle and an iPod for Romeo (some liberties are taken with time period); twelve bike pumps; six Maglites; a wheelbarrow; a throne; eight skull masks; a bouquet of fake roses; a wreath with removable plastic flowers; three black parasols; a pipe for Juliet's nurse; a box of Lion chocolate bars ("We bought them in England, 'cause we weren't sure if we could get them out here," Wimperis said); a glass ashtray lined with K-Y Jelly ("If it gets knocked over, it's better than using water"); walkie-talkies; forty litres of stage blood ("It's quite sugary—like what you use to make candy floss"); a gold-on-black invitation to the Capulets' party; a metal claw with a protruding blade (for Tybalt); four short javelins and five tall ones; three fake crossbows; approximately a hundred swords and daggers (most swords are custom-made to suit the height and weight of a particular actor, and the dents from jousting are filed down between shows); ten rifles with bayonets, for the French Army in "King Lear"; ten without bayonets, for the British; the bloodied head of Decius Brutus; a box of love poems, which drop from the ceiling in "As You Like It" ("They've all been fireproofed"); one Enfield revolver; three Webley revolvers; three AK-56 assault rifles ("These are mine. I'm joking!"); four bags of plastic snow; a brace of fake pheasants; raisins for Audrey; a charango …"
- "Checklist" by Michael Schulman, p 20 of the August 8, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
"He looked pale and battered. There was a rug over his knees. But his straw-colored hair was neatly plastered down, his high "masher" collar was immaculate, and his three-buttoned jacket in dark lovat was the very glass of fashion."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 274 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
"Finally she lost her temper, and threw an inkwell, shrieking in a way that didn't need translating even if Becky had known the German for "pernicated procrastinators" and "gotch-gutted Goths.""
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 130 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
"Damn fool, he thought. You walked right into it, you clown. Because now he'd have even less freedom than before: Gödel would pin him down in some poodle-faking routine when he ought to be out hunting this Spanish mummer—if she really did exist, and if it really was her."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 81 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
"The Channel was boisterous, but seasickness is not a fit subject for discussion; any book on etiquette will tell you that. And etiquette was at the front of Becky's mind as soon as they reached dry land, for once they were on the train, the countess began to teach her and Adelaide a thousand things they'd never dreamed of: how to address the chancellor, the precise difference in rank between the younger son of a count and the elder son of a baron, how to peel an orange at table, the right sort of conversational opening to make to a bishop—every conceivable kind of etiquettical topic, until their heads rang."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 51 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
"Hals's relentless jolliness isn't confined to his genre scenes of rollicking topers, such as "Young Man and Woman in an Inn" (1623). The euphoric hero hoists a glass while being attended with fawning approval by a prostitute, a dog, and an innkeeper—three parties, according to a Dutch adage of the time, whose affections come at a cost."
"Haarlem Shuffle" by Peter Schjeldahl, in the August 8, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, pg 75
"Julia had logged another couple of telephone-pole paint blobs, one of which she'd stopped and studied quite closely using some kind of visual cantrip that he hadn't caught because she hadn't wanted him to catch it—she actually hid it with one hand as she cast it with the other."
"They should have been facing down bellowed challenges from black knights bearing the vergescu, or solving thorny theological dilemmas posed by holy hermits."
"Quentin walked to the very stern and looked out over the wake, swept clean and crushed into foam by the weight of their passage. He felt good and right here. He patted the Muntjac's worn old taffrail: unlike most things and most people in Fillory, the Muntjac needed Quentin, and Quentin hadn't let her down."
I didn't know the "A person who tricks or coerces others into service as sailors or soldiers" definition of this word, but that's how Philip Pullman uses it, here, though he's using it more generally as "a person who tricks or coerces others":
""Where are the crimps working from?" said Goldberg.
"Off the Pier Head, sir. St. Katharine's Basin. See, there's sixty, maybe seventy people to come ashore, maybe more. They offload 'em at the Pier Head, then they can get away straight up Little Thames Street. You seen all them cabs? The cabmen got wind of this trade in the last month or so. They put a copper there regular now, to control 'em. There was nearly a hundred there last week."
He pushed off, then slipped the oars into the oarlocks and started to pull away with short, light strokes.
"What are crimps?" said Sally.
"Parasites," said Goldbergs. "Swindlers. Minor criminals. Those vultures you saw back there.""
The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman, p 237 of the Dell/Laurel-Leaf paperback
, -snefet, -snivet. A cuff on the ear or the side of the head: resp. late C.18–mid-19 (Grose, 1st ed.), then dial.; C.16 (Udall); C.16 (Palsgrave: OED). Perhaps a reduplication of whister, that which ‘whists’ or puts to silence; even so, -clister may pun clyster, an enema, while -snefet, -snivet may be cognate with the vv.
snite snivel. Perhaps orig. dial., as the Palsgrave locus indicates; certainly dial. are the variants whisterpoop (C.17–20), whistersniff (C.19–20), and whister-twister—which last (C.18–19) is certainly a punning reduplication. See also wisty-castor."
"There were dresses; there were nightgowns; there were precious christening robes made of lawn, which needed the finest and most delicate stitching to repair them; there were items she was making for sale to her regular customers—pretty lace gloves, shawls, fine handkerchiefs, embroidered blouses, goffered widow's caps, filmy muslin petticoats. Everything she owned was hauled out from its tissue paper wrappings and ripped to shreds."
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 147 of the Knopf paperback edition
"They had a way of looking all around them, but not in the same time at the same direction, that reminded Brentford of a clockwork armillary sphere and that made him feel dizzy and ill at east just as when they talked very quickly to each other in some language no one understood."
"The Councillors, not knowing what to do, kept their hands up or stuck in mid-motion. She approached their dazed hebdomad and their startled servants, stiffening her backbone, cocking the hammers of her eyes."
"Brentford and the Scavengers passed through the gate to find the gigantic Varangian Guards silently lined up in a row, their barbed halberds pointed at the intruders, and quite impressive in their shining armour plates and morion helms."
"In the rear, a hatch in the floor led down to the hold, and flashlight in hand, Brentford checked once again that everything he needed, or hoped not to need, was there as he had ordered: pellets of Cornwallis zinc to recharge the motor fuel cells; one month's supply of "Vril-food," dried soups, pemmican cakes, cod roe, whey powder, aleuronate bread, bars of his favourite chocolate, lime juice, and coffee; a small sled and harness; a primus stove; a pharmacy; a 16-bore Paradox rifle with boxes of shotgun shells and cartridges; a caribou-fur sleeping bag; spare warm clothes; oil-cloth tarpaulins; ice-axes and guncotton powder; a toolbox with everything necessary to build and live in a snow house or an improvised cave; a captive oil-silk balloon that the could send up to project light signals on—everything that could come in useful to prolong his life or his agony."
"A steady diet of opiate pills, Freezeland Fags, Wormwood Star Absinthe, bad coffee, and almost no food had turned his body into a thin, taut, anatomical écorché, with no muscles and all the nerves showing, the whole offering little or no protection against the outer world."
"Gabriel knew the story from his father, from the time when he had been Portcullis Pursuivant of the City's Civil Registry Records at the House of Honours and Heraldry. It was a story that his father liked to tell a little bit too often and it was he who had started spreading the rumour around various bars and shebeens until he had been deemed a nuisance and "put on ice.""
"Behind those statues were mirrored doors that led to the various parts of the building. The Council Cabinet's was opposite the entrance archway, and this was where Brentford was introduced by one of the gigantic Varangian guards of the Council of Seven's Security Company, who wore the usual uniform of figure-eight ruff, black doublet and black and white striped pluderhosen and held a halberd in his enormous hand."
Wikipedia says: "Pluderhosen, a Northern European form of pansied slops with a very full inner layer pulled out between the panes and hanging below the knee" - and further says that pansied slopes are "round hose characterized by the addition of a layer of panes, or strips of fabric running from the waistband to the leg band. These are commonly referred to as "pumpkin" pants." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluderhosen)
"To the obsessively obsidional Gabriel, this was his Troy, where he would defend himself to the last. His books, lined up with a compact precision, were the battlement from which he would shoot the poisoned arrows of his wit."
"The highbrow or hurried reader will be content with knowing that her "As White As..." was said to have caught the very marrow of the icy city. But that is of little use to really measure the remanence of her name to the olde-New."
"He entered the pub, noted for its remarkable painting of a rather muddy and dark whale-hunting scene, asked for a Scoresby Stout and a Specksioneer Sandwich, and went to the Pneumatic Post Booth."
""How much I regret it, that I am not reputed to perform random acts of kindness," answered Gabriel, as coldly as he could, which was not much, for a natural distaste for all kinds of authority quickly gave him the williwas in such circumstances."
"Though the weather was rather chilly and wet, soldiers in fur-lined trapper hats, mittens, and kamiks were loitering in front of the barracks, playing curling or some rather clumsy soccer, with an air of relaxed resignation to the well-known drabness of the soldiering life."
The epigraph to Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat is a quote from "The True Levellers Standard Advanced," attributed differently (I imagine to fit into the world of the book). So, the epigraph and its in-book attribution:
"It was shewed us by Vision in Dreams, and out of Dreams, That that should be the Place we should begin upon; And though that Earth in view of Flesh, be very barren, yet we should trust the Spirit for a blessing.
A Blast on the Barren Land, or the Standard of True Community Advanc'd, Presented to the Sons of Adam by Henry Hotspur, Being a Platform to Plant the Waste Land Of the Northern Isles & Septentrional Parts, & to Restore the Regiment of Commonwealth, Printed in the Yeer 1649"
"He was wearing royal blue breeches of watered silk, a damask waistcoat of white and gold, and a quilted velvet smoking jacket ornamented with brandenbourgs."
"Then she opened the door of the cold and silent furnace and stuck her hand inside. 'Eureka!' she shouted, with a loud, metallic echo, for there at the bottom of the furnace, with a sparse scattering of ashes and one forgotten clinker, lay the clue!"
Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright, p 195 of the 2008 paperback
The "young female pig" definition was new to me, too. I just came across it:
"All the cattle brought handsome sums, and then it was the pigs' turn. One by one they were displayed: the gilts, the shoats, the cranky old sow and her litter of half-grown piglets."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, pp 239-240 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"Also there were sundry inquiries from private persons, such as the Delacey brothers, Cedric and Fitzroy, who wished to know the plans for the Meeker dogs and a certain Hampshire shoat among the livestock."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, p 202 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"The dragonflies hung above the still surface like turquoise needles and woodpeckers knocked at the dead willow branches up above. The opposite bank was a rich jungle of jewelweed and boneset."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, pp 112-113 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"Dave Addison turned out to be a star swimmer. He could do a jackknife without forgetting to unfold in time, and a swan dive without forgetting to point his toes. He could do the crawl, the trudgeon, the butterfly breast stroke, and stay underwater longer than any of them."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, p 49 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"The living room was full of things: tables, and lots of chairs, all with crocheted antimacassars; pictures and pennants and fans on the wall; a big melodeon at one end of the room with very old sheet music on it; and in the wide doorway there were portieres all made of beads which rattled like rain on a tin roof when Mrs. Wheelwright brushed against them."
The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, p 56 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"The Wheelwrights' house was very interesting, though rather dim because all the windows were smothered under a profusion of potted plants. There were red geraniums, and fuchsias whose blossoms hung from their stems like costly earrings, and great overgrown begonias, and calceolarias all covered with little speckled calico pocketbooks."
The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, p 54 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"Mrs. Oliphant was very glad to see them. She wore a suit made out of pongee, a hat with a green veil, an amethyst necklace, a lapis lazuli necklace, and a silver one with her eyeglasses on it."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, pp 165-166 of the 2008 paperback edition
"Dark-green water in lakes like this, and salt water with big waves and a fishy smell; and water coming loud over a dam, and water in brooks all full of caddis houses and green moss. And water in swamps with cat-tails growing out of it. And yellow mud-puddle water that you can wade in, with the mud as soft as butter between your toes."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, p 129 of the 2008 paperback edition
"Her name was Miss Buff-Towers and she was related in some way to an earl, a fact she was very proud of and never forgot. She had long front teeth, the color of old piano keys, and a huge coiled arrangement of braided hair on top of her head like an orderly eagle's nest. She was a kindhearted creature but she knew as much about raising children as I know about raising coati-mundis. (I'm not even sure what they are."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, pp 35-36 of the 2008 paperback edition
"Mii knows the intricate mycelia of relations and events that are expressed in the gestures of the statues, surge into the points of daggers held over the breasts of enemies and the tips of fingers reaching out for conciliation; she knows the thousands of images and stories of the world of statues that have never achieved expression yet pulsate in stiff gestures of the body."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 245 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"When at twenty-three the dazzlingly beautiful wife of the king is appointed president of the Devel Academy, an assembly of venerable old men who have dedicated their lives to science, jokes are cracked on all the islands of the archipelago. But the jesters are in error—Uddo has an extensive knowledge of chemistry, transformation in metals, runes, augury, archaeology, metaphysics, geometry, architecture, statics, boat-building and building of labyrinths, demonology, astronomy and haruspicy."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 198 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"The islanders would often ask me about the food where I came from, so once I used several cuttlefish mushrooms to fashion for them the fare on the table of a Czech pub, with plates of goulash and dumplings, a smaller plate with brawn, a basket of bread rolls, several half-litres of beer and glasses of rum, adding while I was at it, an open pack of cigarettes and an ashtray with cigarette ends in it."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 141 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"I played on boards whose squares changed in the course of a single game. They were made of squares of darker and lighter sand sprinkled on the board. In the course of the game the wind would blow the sand about, into long patches run through with different colours, until the board became a whirl of darker and lighter twists, reminiscent of the jaspé bindings of books come to life in dreams; and the pieces would pick their way through them, before crumbling and blending in with the sand of the squares."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 128 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
""You're right," the girl conceded. "You should just know that the right triangle ABC plays an important role in all of this and that Leibniz realized that if we reduce the horizontal base of this triangle, correspondingly we reduce the second cathetus so that the triangle will always remain homothetic; the relation of the two catheti maintains a constant value which is a characteristic of the curve of the line at point I."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, pp 112-113 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
""It's simple, I'll show you," said the thief, taking off her black glove and drawing a quadrant in the snow with her index finger. But as she stretched to describe its base and sagitta, the y beneath her gave a fearful crack and in terror she grabbed Baumgarten by his dressing gown. He suggested she leave off the explanations: for the listener's understanding of the story of the wrecked boat a knowledge of infinitesimal calculus was probably not altogether necessary."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 112 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"At point I, in the upper part of the quadrant, a tangent was made, and this—at points A and B—sprouted two metal abscissae, one parallel to line x and the other to line y. They intersected at point C inside the quadrant, thus giving the catheti of a right triangle whose hypotenuse was the segment AB in the tangent."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 112 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"But the majority of the photos there on the desk were of the inside of the cave, its gloomy recesses lit harshly by an electric flash. Evidently the cave had many years earlier been transformed into a speos."
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 106 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"Leaning against the wall to the right of this were two dark beams, crossed, beaten together at their centres to look like a great "X"; he imagined these forming part of a framework used in the cutting of wood. Resting against this rotten saltire were the remnants of a dilapidated door, upon which were quivering the flakes of a cream-coloured varnish with which the door must once have been painted; the door's centre panel still bore a brass handle."
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 75 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"One American defense consultant told me that as yet there is "no smoking calutron," although, like many Western government officials, he is convinced that Iran is intent on becoming a nuclear state sometime in the future."
-"Iran and the Bomb" by Seymour M. Hersh, in the June 6, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 30
"Chilled half-lobster, with an unsightly smear of tomalley vinaigrette, gets by on its winning personality (it's well steamed and satisfying, and it's lobster, after all."
- Shauna Lyon, "Tables for Two: The John Dory Oyster Bar" in the May 30, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 18
"These objects—darkly stained wood-and-aluminium structures with additional elements of fabric, leather, and sinamay (a stiff cloth often used in millinery)—are domestically scaled, their simple armatures recalling ambiguous sections of furniture."
- From a review of a Claire Barclay show in Art in America, December 2010, review by Lee Triming, p 158
"From what Sinkler had seen, the man worked as hard as the road crews and had about as much to show for it. Twenty years older and too much of a gink to realize what Lucy understood at eighteen."
"The Trusty" by Ron Rash in the May 23, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 73
Ah, weasand. I'd forgotten about this word but came across it again today: "The gullet was separated and the weasand was drawn from the windpipe. They cleared the chest of its entrails."
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds, p 49 of the Penguin paperback
"In the beginning I used to get postcards. At first they were warm and even jovial: Everything is fine. I'm thinking of joining the Chilean Speleological Society but don't worry, it won't interfere with my poetry, if anything the two pursuits are complementary."
"The plumber pitied me so much I had to press money on him, I tell W. He didn't want to take it. He'd never seen anything like it, he said, standing, looking up at the ceiling. He seemed hypnotised. He wouldn't leave, but just stood there, looking. And even when he went out the front door, he was still shaking his head. —'Howay, it's terrible, man'."
"But W.'s studies of ancient Greek are not progressing well, he says. It's the aorist, it defeats him every time. W.'s bumping his head against the ceiling of his intelligence, he says. I often have that feeling, I tell him. —'No, you're just lazy', W. says."
"There is the old village itself and its vestigial claims to "authenticity"; the church (relatively new as southwestern churches go, having replaced an older one in 1884); the 18-year-old upscale development to the west for contrast (and for an architectural tour of another nature; it's a good survey of imagined "Santa Fe style"); the movie set in the distance the curandero's "office" with its skull on a pole; what used to be here and there (scattered adobe ruins); the quite new community center and the brand new firehouse (partially built by community work parties); yard art; an extensive petroglyph site; the cloud shows and encompassing light on ranchlands and mountains; the (diminishing) biological diversity of the creek and bosque; the mouth-watering tamales at the Tienda Anaya; and, of course, the people."
"By analyzing this "modern art of everyday expression" as it appears in accounts of spatial practices, J.-F. Augoyard discerns in it two especially fundamental stylistic figures: synecdoche and asyndeton."
The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau, p 101
"They include the kinds of relationship this enunciation entertains with particular paths (or "statements") by according them a truth value ("alethic" modalities of the necessary, the impossible, the possible, or the contingent), an epistemological value ("epistemic" modalities of the certain, the excluded, the plausible, or the questionable) or finally an ethical or legal value ("deontic" modalities of the obligatory, the forbidden, the permitted, or the optional)."
The practice of everyday life by Michel de Certeau, p 99
"The Jews who stand between the sky and the city's roofs stop the rain, and when it's very cold, at Christmas, the snow falls on their shtreimels and caftans."
Curriculum Vitae by Yoel Hoffmann, translated by Peter Cole, 86
"Now was Rusty a childish Binelli-issued nickname for his redheaded sister, or was it a reference to the scavenged nail that poked one or the other young cordwainer in the big toe and began a period of infectious infirmary that would lead to the necessity of finding a crafty activity to fill the long hours of bedridden days, an activity of which the children failed to tire, though strength returned; no by god, they never tired of this, the smell of leather, the meticulous stitching, the shodding of the people, the heady glamour, the creative juices stirring within pent-up loins, loins that hungered for the tickle of a stray red wisp tossed carelessly past a hollowed cheek—well, it is all conjecture and as such not for this report to contemplate. Shoes were made, many shoes."
Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles by Kira Henehan, p 48
"Kohlrabi, spigarello, and an ever-changing variety of mushrooms (maitakes, honshemejis, and shiitakes) are among the ingredients he uses to enhance crowd-pleasing entrées like smoked duck breast, grilled polenta, and our favorite, the perfectly seared swordfish that follows."
The New Brooklyn Cookbook by Melissa Vaughan and Brendan Vaughan, p 29
"In Yakushkin's memoir, he spends pages explaining the "artel" system the prisoners devised whereby everybody, those receiving generous stipends from home as well as those receiving little, contributed to a common account to ensure that no prisoner ever had to be in need."
"At one end of the village, the old Trakt crossed a small river called the Esaulovka on an ancient ruined bridge. Its gray wooden crossbeams supported the ricketiest of planking; the planks were sawn lumber but the beams showed only the marks of a bladed tool like a froe or an adze."
"Among his potential allies were worthies like the murderously anti-Bolshevik Cossack atamans Grigory Semeyonov and Ivan Kalmykov, who each controlled a stretch of Far Eastern railroad line."
"After salmon started coming to the nets, the food improved. Valentina made sautéed salmon steaks, and a soup of salmon heads and potatoes called ukha, and fried salmon liver and salmon milt with kasha, and salmon eggs and butter on thinly sliced black bread."
"Picking up a boletus bigger than any I'd seen in my life, I hurried back across the tundra to the cabin. Everyone in our party had gone in there to drink tea and vodka and get warm."
"But in The Gulag Archipelago, I had read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's musings on the proper memorial for the forced labor camps of Stalin's time: "I visualize…," Solzhenitsyn wrote, "somewhere on a high point in the Kolyma, a most enormous Stalin, just such a size as he himself dreamed of, with mustaches many feet long and the bared fangs of a camp commandant, one hand holding the reins and the other wielding a knout with which to beat his team of hundreds of people harnessed in fives and all pulling hard. This would also be a fine sight on the edge of the Chukchi Peninsula next to the Bering Strait.""
"While improvising a fishing pole for Katya from a willow sapling, I cut deep into the ball of my thumb with my barlow pocketknife, and I made a fuss about that."
"Part of The Secret History tells of the campaign of Genghis's son Jochi in 1207 against the People of the Forest. The campaign succeeded, and the People of the Forest submitted to Jochi, bringing him "white gerfalcons, white geldings, and black sables.""
"Swann will hold two auctions, beginning with a selection of ocean-liner and other transportation memorabilia (posters, photo albums, embossed china, and the like) on Feb. 3, followed by one of vintage posters, one of the house's mainstays, on Feb. 8. The latter sale celebrates all things brumal, especially sport, and includes a group of posters from the nineteen-thirties, forties, and fifties related to Dartmouth's rambunctious Winter Carnival."
"Galloway was authorized by the military to work on a specific set of threatening diseases that were considered potential weapons in war or in terrorism, including anthrax, smallpox, tularemia, plague, and the Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers."
"Going Viral" by David E. Hoffman, in The New Yorker, January 31, 2011, p 26
"He realizes everything at once like the climax of a bad Hindi musical. And then, with a certain horrid glee, he gets to the fundamental truth of it, the anagnorisis: This incident alone will keep us two old boys going for the next forty years. It is the story to end all stories. It is the gift that keeps on giving."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 441 of the Vintage International paperback
"Naima had already changed out of her house galabia and into the hard fabric of her black dress, a veil wrapped tightly around her head, revealing the delicate shape of her skull."
"Naima" by Hisham Matar, in The New Yorker, January 24, 2011, p 64
""Oh, yes, surely day is de holy troot," said Hortense anxiously, fingering her plasticated carnations. "But at de same time, surely a Witness lady don' wan' look like a well, a buguyaga in de house of de Lord.""
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 321 of the Vintage International paperback
"Irie passed her the long hat pin that was sitting on top of a butter dish. Hortense set the plastic carnations straight on her hat and stabbed them fiercely, then brought the pin back up through the felt, leaving two inches of exposed silver sticking up from the hat like a German pickelhaube."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 320 of the Vintage International paperback
""Irie, look at you! Pickney nah even got a gansey on—child must be freezin'! Shiverin' like a Mexico bean. Let me feel you. Fever! You bringin' fever into my house?"
It was important, in Hortense's presence, never to admit to illness. The cure, as in most Jamaican households, was always more painful than the symptoms."
White Teeth by Zadie Smth, p 316 of the Vintage International paperback
""You see, Jones," said Samad, "the real mistake the viceroy made was to give the Sikhs any position of power, you see? Just because they have some limited success with the kaffir in Africa, he says Yes, Mr. Man, with your sweaty fat face and your silly fake English mustache and your pagri balanced like a large shit on the top of your head, you can be an officer, we will Indianize the army; go, go and fight in Italy, Rissaldar Major Pugri, Daffadar Pugri, with my grand old English troops! Mistake!""
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 75 of the Vintage International paperback
"Two weeks later, as Archie checked their route to Sofia, to no one in particular Samad said, "I should not be here."
As usual, he was ignored, most fiercely and resolutely by Archie, who wanted somehow to listen.
"I mean, I am educated, I am trained. I should be soaring with the Royal Airborne Force, shelling from on high! I am an officer! Not some mullah, some sepoy, wearing out my chappals in hard service. My grandfather Mangal Pande"—he looked around for the recognition the name deserved, but, being met only with blank pancake English faces, continued—"was the great hero of the Indian Mutiny!"
Silence."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, pp 74-75 of the Vintage International paperback
"These cases you can see are made from lapacho, a wood that has no cracks that insects can penetrate; I ordered the shelves especially: they are ten hardwood boards stuck together with an insect-repellent glue, and I put glass fronts on them because books obviously accumulate dust."
The House of Paper by Carlos María Domínguez, translated by Nick Caistor, pp 36-37
"I don't know what compelled me at age six to transplant a bunch of buttercups from the local non-playground at the bottom of our street to my father's garden. I don't know if my buttercups were of the cursed, bristly, early, hispid, creeping, bulbous, or common variety. They were yellow."
"Few visitors came to that room, and when they did, they had a tendency to ask, "Is this the bricks?" meaning Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII, made from, and consisting of, 120 firebricks, which to this day remains an exciting touchstone for art skeptics and philistines everywhere. I was delighted to be able to say, "No, it's not the bricks. It's the stones.""
The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson, pp 65-66
"Instead of using various different words for walking, the Japanese use a common base verb, then add an assortment of phenomimes, which are used as adverbs. So aruku is the basic word meaning to walk, then chokochoko aruku is to toddle, noronoro aruku is to inch along, furafura aruku is to shamble or teeter, and zorozoro aruku is to swarm or cluster."
"then she goes over the clothes she needs, B said, above all drawers and a corset that fits like a glove, A said, she wants to keep her shape, and says she has too much belly, she ought to give up beer, B recalled, but that embonpoint is by no means Molly's weak point, A said,"
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 260
"The union in the here and now becomes hieroghamic on The Sweets of Sin, Professor Jones said, though the oghamic script is here substituted for by the simple and modified Irish characters..."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 251
"To continue the evolution of English prose, A said, it is noteworthy that at this time and in the bar, the barbarous bibulous boys break down into an English that recalls the nighttime dialect of Finnegans Wake.
"Shut your obstropolos," said B. Quiet your claptrap."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 195
"Mrs. Purefoy's childbirth at the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street is a dystocia, or truly difficult labor. Almost as difficult as this chapter, said the Cicerone in the doorway to this white room of the House."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 187
"She leaned back to look at the shower of colors high in the sky, cupping one knee in her hands, and as he was the only one there to see, offered him the sight of her legs, her blue garters and white nainsook knickers, while something dark and soft slid across the lake of the sky, O! she trembled in all her limbs from leaning so far back, O! the blinding flash and a cascade of stars and dew gushed out and melted in the gray air around the main in black outlined against the rock."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 179
"And to continue showing how little he fits into this brutal, enclosed atmosphere, Bloom gives a scientific lecture to the group, transfigured into Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft (although it's not exactly the scent of flowers that comes from his cigar), explaining to them all in graphic detail and expression, corpora cavernosa, etc., why hanged men have erections.
It's not orchitis, A said, perhaps remembering Mr. Flower."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 168
I wasn't familiar with "list" in the sense of "a strip of cloth" until now:
"Speaking of Rabelaisian lists, A said, the list (using the word in its sartorial sense) with the most historical and mythical weight here is the one the Citizen is wearing, in its epic-parodic transposition.
The row of stones hanging from his belt, B recalled, on which are carved the figures of numerous heroes and historical characters."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 164
"The riddle that Lenehan the sports reporter proposes to his colleagues and friends at the newspaper, the Cicerone said—"What opera resembles a railway line?"—is remembered by Bloom on several occasions throughout the day of Ulysses.
A few paragraphs further on, in the newspaper office, Lenehan proudly tells them the answer:
"The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!"
Railing at the rails, A said.
Paronomasia, Professor Jones said."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, pp 105-106
"To see it with the eyes of a stranger, but also with those of a native shopkeeper, a bum, a housekeeper, a farmer and soldier, a priest and poet and patient and day-laborer and whore and journalist and concerned citizen and street sweeper...And with the eyes of all the dead, the vagabonds and popes, clerks and troubadours, fratres minores, prelates, goliards, painters, bankers, and truck drivers."
Arriving in Avignon by Daniël Robberechts, translated by Paul Vincent, p 136 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"It must be some thirty years after Sade's death that Mérimée, passing through Avignon, arranges for Enguerrand Charonton's Couronnement de la Vierge to be taken to the hospice of Villeneuve for safety; he writes: Avignon is filled with churches and palaces, all provided with battlemented and machicolated towers."
Arriving in Avignon by Daniël Robberechts, translated by Paul Vincent, p 115 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"A wide-arched passageway gives onto a peaceful alley-way planted almost like a garden, where a few children are chattering: "A béguinage," thinks the Fleming, but ordinary people live in the little houses."
Arriving in Avignon by Daniël Robberechts, translated by Paul Vincent, p 67 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"The Count lauded the men of Avignon for the way they had welcomed him, and promised them "the high esteem of all Christendom and of your own country; for you are bringing back chivalry, and Joy, and Parage.""
Arriving in Avignon by Daniël Robberechts, translated by Paul Vincent, p 65 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"20's Plenty, which King runs without pay, while managing his own small I.T. company, makes the case that restrained, good-natured driving in residential areas—tootling—is best achieved not by the fussy, expensive apparatus of speed bumps, chicanes, and school zones, but, rather, by area-wide speed limits of twenty miles per hour, such as were recently introduced in Portsmouth and several other British cities, thanks in part to King's activities."
"Tootling" by Ian Parker, in The New Yorker, December 6, 2010, p 31
"No significant cracks have emerged since the last restoration, when the paint surfaces were "consolidated"—their gaps filled in, Anne Grevenstein-Kruse wrote to me in an email, "with a solution of animal glue (a proteïn). After that, the surface was covered with a mixture of beeswax, colophony, and lavender oil (to soften the paint). This mixture was melted into the paint structure by using strong heating elements. The surface was then flattened with metal spatulas.""
"The Flip Side" by Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker, November 29, 2010, p 45
"Walnut storage from BoConcept echoes the warmth of the external iroko cladding, while the travertine flooring picks up the tones of the house's original stone walls."
Homes & Interiors Scotland, September & October 2009, p 79
"The inner passage was lined with gib-board, and narrower still: if two actors met in the middle they had to perform a quick shuffling rotating embrace, like an animate turnstile revolving in the dark."
The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton, p 75 (US edition)
"And given that I am addicted to moqueca de camarão—a rich shrimp stew, traditionally cooked with urucum berries, chili, onions, lime juice, coconut milk, and palm oil, dusted with toasted manioc flour, and served on rice—which I ate for the first time that year at a restaurant in Ipanema, I keep my tipiti in the living room as a memento mori of all the Canela who must have died, looking for ways to make their manioc roots safe and tasty."
"Down Under" by Jane Kramer, in the New Yorker, November 22, 2010, p 84
"Eleanor had grown up with little idea of what went on in a kitchen, but she was a quick study. By the time she became, as the Washington Post put it, "the first Housewife of the Nation," she had developed a straightforward message about her culinary goals. "I am doing away with all the kickshaws—no hothouse grapes—nothing out of season," she told a reporter who inquired about the "economy menus," and added that she intended to provide "good and well-cooked food." Few guests or family members felt that she succeeded."
"The First Kitchen" by Laura Shapiro, in the New Yorker, November 22, 2010, p 76
"Since June 2009, wheat, buckwheat, and rye flours have been on sale at their Greenmarket stalls, as well as corn meals, polentas, and whole grains such as emmer, barley, and oats—all grown upstate."
"Breadwinners" by Indrani Sen, in Edible Brooklyn No. 19, Fall 2010, p 43
"The marabout (what was its name, exactly?) was mostly visited by women and children. Young ones afflicted with terrible manias were brought there to have their heads knocked gently against the tomb of the saint."
The Clash of Images by Abdelfattah Kilito, translated by Robyn Creswell, p 13
"Didn't I tell you?" Monsieur Trouvé was grinning like a little boy. He had a good pair of lungs in that wide chest of his, so he continued to yell after them. "I replaced our original model with one of Eugène's bourdon tubes, activated by gunpowder charges. I did say I had taken a keen interest recently."
"He holds his head back warily, defiantly, on his shoulders, so that the furnishings in this house won't get the better of him: the dado with its raised pattern of diamonds under thick brown paint, the polished wood of the hall stand, the yellow gleams of brass among the shadows—the face of the clock, a rack for letters, a little gong hanging in a frame with a suède-covered mallet balanced across two hooks, a tall pot to hold umbrellas."
"The Trojan Prince" by Tessa Hadley, in The New Yorker, November 15, 2010, page 77
"It must take a lot of effort to keep a man like him tidy. Not to mention well tailored. He was bigger than most. She had to give credit to his valet, who must be a particularly tolerant claviger."
"Etienne swallowed the potion that had been placed in front of him, a potion very probably made of bidet water, the nectar of brothels and the hydromel of whorehouses."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 298 of the NYRB paperback
"Whereupon Themistocles decides to put his oar in, he turns toward Meussieu Pic and says, point-blank:
'You're a wit, old Pic.'
'Me, a wittol!' (he suffocates). 'But Meussieu I won't allow you to insult me like that! To say nothing of my wife! I respect the French army, Meussieu; and you, you ought to respect the sanctity of the French family. Me, a wittol, ho! At my age, to be insulted by a, by a...Ho!'
He gets up and starts waving his arms about wildly. The ladies calm him down. Madame Pic looks puzzled; fortunately, she doesn't know what a wittol is. Themistocles, alarmed at the effect he has produced, tries to justify himself.
'But it was a pun!'"
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 197 of the NYRB paperback
"Sitting on a broad, flat stone, that he had chosen with care, Etienne was following with listless eye the reduced activity of his balneal colleagues."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 169 of the NYRB paperback
"The doctor had not notified them of any contagious diseases in the area belonging to the commune; the hens wouldn't have to fear the staggers, the pigs swine fever, the turkeys the pip, the cows mammitis, the dogs rabies or the horses glanders."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 145 of the NYRB paperback
and nothing was left but coenesthetic impressions: his stomach hollowing, his temples hollowing, his fontanel hollowing, and then turning into a sort of well, of well, of well without bottom or rim, into which stones fall indefinitely, without ever coming into contact with the surface of the black water entirely and forever bereft of light and movement, the surface of this perfectly carbonic, arachnoid water, the skin of a brain.
"
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, pp 127-128 the NYRB paperback
"Ernestine, happy days are here! No more French fries and white wine! No more chemicals and suburban trains! No more of my brother's attentions and my sister-in-law's insults! No more work! No more being broke! It's gigolos for us, and bottles of kümmel!"
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 114 of the NYRB paperback
"So she put her fur wrapper back on, looked at the time on an enormous old turnip which she took out of a carpetbag, paid for her camomile tea, leaving a most ungratifying gratuity for the waiter, and left, in despair."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 29 of the NYRB paperback
Yes, I did like it - the writing was a really satisfying mix of the everyday and the lyrical. A lot of the book's a pretty straight family saga, which isn't what I usually read, but there was enough magic/mystery/literariness to keep it fun for me.
"Into that opened book leaped the first barbarian, leaped and vanished, and the next after him and the next, and then, by twos and threes and sixes and sevens, they leaped in and disappeared, amid gasping and shouting and the nearing sound of the bucina and of the trumpets of Rome."
The Magic City by E. Nesbit, p 198 of the SeaStar Books paperback
"The Dwelling seemed to be a sort of town of rounded buildings more like lime-kilns than anything else, with arched doors leading to dark insides. They were all built of tiny stones, such as lay on the beach. Beyond the huts or houses towered the castle, a vast rough structure with towers and arches and buttresses and bastions and glacis and bridges and a great moat all around it."
The Magic City by E. Nesbit, p 119 of the SeaStar Books paperback
"Philip straggled away to the window and looked out dismally at the soaked lawn and the dripping laburnum trees, and the row of raindrops hanging fat and full on the iron gate."
The Magic City by E. Nesbit, p 3 of the SeaStar Books paperback edition
"Does the electric field have weak spots where fish can pass? Does a winter-time influx of road salt in the water cause the charge to fluctuate? What about when the current must be turned off for maintenance of the bars or cables? Is the rotenone chemical fish killer administered when the current is off effective without fail?"
"Fish Out of Water" by Ian Frazier, in the New Yorker, October 25, 2010, p 71
"The first concert shows the venue's variety: Ensemble East, a group that plays traditional Japanese instruments, performs works by such composers as Tadao Sawai, Michio Miyagi, and James Nyoraku Schleger (on shakuhachi)."
"Their big pile, which weighs down the middle of the island with its austere vernacular chunkiness, is dubbed 'Holland', because of some Traill's dubious notion that this green lozenge resembled the fertile polders of the Netherlands."
"Sessile oak, beech and silver birch crowd around the sandy track, the sunlight twinkles from between the interlocking boughs, the little boys cavort, the adolescents even begin to frolic a bit."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 154
Note that the Sessile Oak is a thing unto itself, but in the course of looking it up I looked up the general meaning of "sessile" too.
"How he hates the suburbs — I can see the distaste etched all over his face. I know what he feels like, how the red brick, the pantiles, the stained-glass fanlights are all bearing down on him — because I felt exactly the same way at his age, as if I was about to be suffocated by the sheer orderliness of all the neat verges and linseed-oiled garage doors."
"From the stern keep of the Norman overlord issued forth decrees and exactions; in a world of wood, wheat and water, its high stone walls were the most adamantine confirmation of the temporal order, just as the acuminate spire of the church pricked the oppressive heavens."
"Of course, he isn't literally a fishmonger (I don't believe he even likes fish), because this is a City Livery Company, and while the Fishmongers' retains more links with the trade than, say, the Goldsmiths' it is in essence a living fossil; a medieval guild, cemented to the Square Mile like an oyster, through which flows a great current of nutritious pelf."
"The garden of the house ran nearly down to the river, and a few minutes' walk away was a khlong where we could catch the longtail boats into the city centre."
"The minibar in the hotel was no help. It was called the Selfbar — so I took it personally and downed the lot: the scotches, the vodkas, the gins and the Amazonian armpit aguardientes."
"In truth, Bendor was so bizarre that it quite neutralised the effect of the LSD; and it wasn't until we were back in Bandol, at one of those café-bars that charges forty quid for a vitelline-hued cocktail in a glass the size of a vitrine, that I remembered I was hallucinating."
"The youthful populace of Dublin are being sucked out of the churches by the ideological vacuum; on to the streets, then into the bars and restaurants which have colonised the city centre. Where once burly men in soutanes enforced the creed, now burly men in black overcoats enforce the guest list."
"So measured and theatrical was the riot that I had time to appreciate the way the police formed up into small shielded testudos, lost ground, broke, then reformed, as bottles and bricks crashed down on Plexiglas."
"We went to the railway station so that I could buy a ticket for the Himigiri-Howrah Express, a mighty Aryan iron horse that would drag me clear across the north of the subcontinent to Chandigarh. I got a chitty from Window A and took it for authorisation to Window B. At Window B I received a second chitty and took it to the Sales Booth. Every single step had to be taken through a dense thicket of humanity; thorny limbs pricked me, twiggy fingers scratched me. I emerged blinking and bedevilled into the harsh light of the maidan."
"Normally, on my long-distance walks, anoesis descends within a few miles: the mental tape loop of infuriating resentments, or inane pop lyrics, or nonce phrases gives way to the greeny-beige noise of the outdoors."
"Up ahead looms the brick, oasthouse-shape of the Shot Tower, where shot was manufactured in the nineteenth century; globules of molten lead plummeting into deadly spheroids."
"I gain the crest of the hill and there it is, falling away behind me, swags and ruches of greenery and brick, under the blue-painted ceiling of its recent conversion: New London, city of the toppermost property prices. I can see a golden drop of sunlight on the glans of the Swiss Re Tower (Lord Foster's phallus, commonly known as the Gherkin), and the inverted pool table of Battersea Power Station. I can see the Hampstead massif and the Telecom Tower. I can see my life, entire, in a single saccade."
"These are, perforce, strips of biltong — the sign didn't lie. This has to be the biggest biltong emporium in the northern hemisphere. There are hundreds of strips of the stuff: chilli-flavoured biltong, garlic biltong, biltong flavoured any number of ways. How many hard-masticating South Africans must London contain in order to support this minimart full of beef jerky?"
"I left Stockwell in cagoule and cashmere pullover, but as I gain Putney Bridge I strip to my own T-shirt and sit at a zinc-topped table outside a branch of Carluccio's, sipping a latte and eating an almond pastry."
"It occurs to me that if I am akin to any literary traveller, it's Laurence Sterne, oscillating in the moment, dizzied by impressions and unable to make it from the remise door to the Calais Inn, let alone progress into France and Italy."
"In the gutter are stooks of faded flowers in cellophane funnels, together with handwritten condolence cards: the wayside shrine of contemporary folk religion."
"And so it went on: the grapes of wrath trailed across Afghanistan and Iraq, the bitter vendage of civilian deaths, then the hypostatisation of terror through the cirrhotic liver of another failed state."
"Mine are not writerly journeys in the accepted sense: Rouseeau philosophising à pied, Goethe rattling into Switzerland in a coach, Cobbett on his clopping gee-gee, assorted Borrows and Stevensons plodding with their donkeys, Greene rocking on a train, Thesiger with a camel up his arse."
"the very obvious references to eero saarinen and S.O.M. may have secured jacobsen's name as a cool modernist at the time, but they also made him look like an epigone with a deft hand at furniture design, a view of jacobsen you can still meet, not least here in denmark."
"I am not fond of jugged hare for dinner, either as a light entrée or as a pièce de résistance; but this accomplished attendant had the art of presenting you such a dish in a manner that persuaded you, for the time, that it was worthy of your serious consideration. The hare, by the way, before being subjected to the mysterious operation of jugging, might have been seen dangling from a hook in the bar of the inn, together with a choice collection of other viands."
"An English Winter Watering-Place," p 159 of the Oxford paperback edition of English Hours
"There were roads and weeds—the city's landscaping was taking root at a remote nursery—and swells of clayish soil that made bioswales of the central park."
From the Epicurious food dictionary,: "A classic English preparation that begins with cut pieces of HARE that are soaked in a red wine-juniper berry marinade for at least a day. The marinated meat is well browned, then combined in a casserole (traditionally a heatproof crock or jug) with vegetables, seasonings and stock, and baked. When the meat and vegetables are done, the juices are poured off and combined with cream and the reserved hare blood and pulverized liver. The strained sauce is served over the "jugged" hare and vegetables.
"At the top of the street, into which, with my guide-book, I relapsed, was an old market-cross of the fifteenth century—a florid, romantic little structure. It consists of a stone pavilion, with open sides and a number of pinnacles and crockets and buttresses, besides a goodly medallion of the high-nosed visage of Charles I, which was placed above one of the arches, at the Restoration, in compensation for the violent havoc wrought upon the little town by the Parliamentary soldiers, who had wrested the place from the Royalists and who amused themselves, in their grim fashion, with infinite hacking and hewing in the cathedral."
"English Vignettes" in English Hours by Henry James, p 147 of the Oxford paperback edition
"This is your first impression as you travel (naturally by the objectionable conveyance) from Ryde to Ventnor; and the fact that the train rumbles along very smoothly and stops at half a dozen little stations, where the groups on the platform enable you to perceive that the population consists almost exclusively of gentlemen in costumes suggestive of unlimited leisure for attention to cravats and trousers (an immensely large class in England), of old ladies of the species denominated in France rentières, of young ladies of the highly educated and sketching variety, this circumstance fails to reconcile you to the chartered cicatrix which forms your course."
"English Vignettes" in English Hours by Henry James, pp 142-143 of the Oxford paperback edition
"But I watched the watery sunshine upon the rugosities of its ancient masonry; I stood a while in the shade of two or three spreading yews which stretched their black arms over graves decorated for Easter, according to the custom of that country, with garlands of primrose and dog-violet; and I reflected that in a 'wild' region it was a blessing to have so quiet a place of refuge as that."
"English Vignettes" in English Hours by Henry James, p 141 of the Oxford paperback edition
"The new life and the old have melted together; there is no dividing-line. In the drawing-room wall there is a queer funnel-shaped hole, with the broad end inward, like a small casemate. You ask what it is, but people have forgotten. It is something of the monks; it is a mere detail."
"Abbeys and Castles" in English Hours by Henry James, p 134 of the Oxford paperback edition
"Who are they all, and where are they going, and whence have they come, and what smoking kitchens and gaping portals and marshalled flunkeys are prepared to receive them, from the southernmost limits of a loosely interpreted, an almost transpontine Belgravia, to the hyperborean confines of St John's Wood?"
"London" in English Hours by Henry James, p 27 of the Oxford paperback edition
"There will be snide routines about the local wine. Our table isn't ready, and I walk ahead of my daughter and take a seat at the bar. To spite her, I order a scuppernong champagne."
- From "The Landlord" by Wells Tower, in The New Yorker, September 13, 2010, p 69
I knew this word as a noun but not as a verb - until I read this:
"The view from the bridge over the Serpentine has an extraordinary nobleness, and it has often seemed to me that the Londoner twitted with his low standard may point to it with every confidence."
English Hours by Henry James, p 10 of the Oxford University Press paperback edition
"A member of the water lily family, junsai grows in clumps in natural ponds and irrigation reservoirs. A perennial water grass, junsai's flower is a deep maroon-red. It is the young, unfurled sprout covered in a slippery, transparent jelly, which is the culinary item prized by so many Japanese. Fresh sprouts come to market early in the summer.
Junsai and related Brasenia water plants grow in lakes, ponds and slow streams in many parts of the world, including much of North America and Europe. "
"A girl wearing sabots clip-clopped across the asphalt roadway, and next to the streetcar barn four or five kids were throwing rocks at a line of empty cans."
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin, p 64
"A huge, towering zelkova tree stood just inside the front gate. People said it was at least a hundred and fifty years old. Standing at its base, you could look up and see nothing of the sky through its dense cover of green leaves."
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin, p 11
"The word comes from Old English and refers to a coastal topography behind a beach, a somewhat dunal and undulating landscape, untillable, under bushes of prickly gorse, scattered heather, and a thin turf of marram and other grasses. Scotland is necklaced by these essentially treeless linkslands, brought up from the deep by the crustal rebounding of a region once depressed by glacial ice, links about as vulnerable to sea surges as Los Angeles is to earthquakes, common grazings good for little else but the invention of public games, where marine whirlwinds could blow out the turf and create ancestral bunkers—for example, Turnberry, Muirfield, Dornoch, Crail, Carnoustie, Prestwick, Royal Troon."
"Linksland and Bottle" by John McPhee, in The New Yorker, September 6, 2010, p 50
"In Scotland, the natural courses come in three main forms: the linksland courses by the sea, the moorland courses everywhere, and the forested parkland courses of the interior, some involving eskers, drumlins, and lateral moraines, but all the result of various glacial effects."
"Linksland and Bottle" by John McPhee, in The New Yorker, September 6, 2010, pp 48-49
"In this treeless and littoral terrain, the waters beside it did not suggest to me the Savannah River, but Jerris's concentration was on the swales, hollows, and longitudinal mounds of the fairways."
"Linksland and Bottle" by John McPhee, in The New Yorker, September 6, 2010, p 48
"But whatever clever eristic moves you make, there's a problem on the horizon—extreme academe is heading our way." "Will the Book Survive Generation Text?" by Carlin Romano, in The Chronicle Review
"Between 1860 and 1863, the first stamp catalogs were issued (in Belgium, Britain, France, and the United States), specialty magazines for stamp collectors appeared in several countries, a Frenchman published the first stamp album, and another Frenchman coined the term "philately," which replaced "timbromania" as the name of this popular pastime."
Waiting for the Weekend by Witold Rybczynski, p 197
"He laughs. 'I'll never understand why it is that you can build huge sculptures that withstand gale force winds, deal with dye recipes, cook kozo, and all that, and you can't do anything whatsoever with food. It's amazing.'"
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, p 81 of the Harcourt paperback edition
"By scrimping and saving, making Christmas presents for everyone herself and being very sweet and cajoling to the butcher, Kathleen managed to buy Leo raw lights every other day, and still saved enough to give him a red rubber ball for Christmas."
Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones, pp 79-80 of the 2001 hardcover edition
The intranet at my workplace mentioned a fundraiser at our company's UK office that featured "Cake, gift, craft and book stalls, a tombola, nail painting" etc. I don't think I'd ever heard of a tombola before - the OED online describes it as "A kind of lottery resembling lotto," which seems slightly vague to me, though looking at the OED entry for lotto sheds some light: "A game played with cards divided into numbered and blank squares and numbered discs to be drawn on the principle of a lottery. Each player has one or more cards before him; one of the discs is drawn from a bag, and its number called; a counter is placed on the square that has the same number, the player who first gets one row covered being the winner."
"This kind of thing—a Dutchman from 1800 speaking English like Bill Sikes—goes with the fictional territory, I suppose, and Mitchell, to be fair, is alert to the misprision of translation and cultural transmission: the book has many scenes in which the fumbling Dutchmen and Japanese clink the cracked cups of their different languages together, while meaning leaks away."
"The Floating Library" by James Wood in the New Yorker, July 5, 2010, p 72
"Corporate executives facing down hostile shareholders load their pockets full of numbers. So do politicians on the hustings, doctors counseling patients and fans abusing their local sports franchise on talk radio."
"She stood there with a ragged cob in her eyes and surbate hooves almost too tender to walk upon, but she was tall, and still awesome in her shabbiness."
"Twins" by C.E. Morgan, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 130
"Always be hot up in here," the woman said and she made a half-hearted gesture over her shoulder at the spavined house, but she wasn't looking back toward the house; her gaze had drifted down first to Almon, then inched its way over to Mickey.
"Twins" by C.E. Morgan, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 124
"This was Cincinnati—the capital of pork, the first truly American city—sprawled before the eyes of two little boys under the momentary aegis of one Mike Shaughnessy, truck driver, half-hearted Lothario, collector of children, poor Irish agnate, known in high school as that fucking Irish fuck."
"Twins" by C.E. Morgan in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 123
"After the smoke and cordite cleared and the clowder of little-girl voices quit their chiming screams, Lazarus touched his temple, his finger finding a dab of blood no bigger than a drop of claret."
"Dayward" by ZZ Packer, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 109
" 'Mr. Dunworthy's had to turn the Senior Common Room into an office. She has no respect at all for the sported oak or the notion of knocking, so Mr. Dunworthy's had to devise an outer and inner office, though I personally think a moat would have been more effective.'"
"To enter any public space, be it a restaurant in Gion or a dark little café in the narrow streets of Shinjuku, a tiny basket or lacquer shop whose smallness is apparent as soon as you walk in the door, you have to bend over on entering and walk with your head down while contorting yourself around the shelves, all the time making sure you don't bang your head against a kakemono or knock over an entire shelf of precious ceramics, tea pots, or little saké glasses with your backpack while turning around."
Self-portrait abroad by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, translated by John Lambert, p 35
""... Also a silver paten and chalice, a wooden crucifix, a silver wafer box, the Epistles, the Gospels, and the regimental colors of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Seventh Battalion," he read."
"He did what he was told to do as long as he was able, picking oakum until exhaustion stopped him, or helping to push the heavy handle of the bone grinder round and round until his body failed and he had to be half carried, half dragged back to his pallet."
"Before the hard days of winter set in, he slaughtered the pig, and for a week stayed at home with the job of butchering. The dogs feasted on bones and scraps, and Pell roasted the head. Dogman salted the flitches and sold the rest."
I didn't know a hobby was a bird 'til I read this: "If the walking hadn't been so strenuous, she might have enjoyed the view more, the great rolling swards of chalk grassland stretching out golden in all directions, skies dotted with hobby and merlin, circling, anxious to be off south."
"They passed within twenty yards of each other on either side of the frumenty seller's striped tent, Pell and Bean heading toward the grounds of the cathedral, Joe Ridley to the nearest tavern."
This was a new-to-me sense of this word: "To cover, as vegetables, with earth." See a potato clamp here: http://www.self-sufficient.co.uk/Potato-Clamp-Storing-Potatoes.htm. I read about it in The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff: "With what Pell and the boys earned out of doors, and all that Lou, Bean, Ellen, and Sally accomplished at home, the pantry would be filled for winter with fruit in jars, apples set on racks, potatoes in the clamp, hanging bacon, and maize flour ground arduously by hand to save paying the miller" (p 33).
"Downriver, the great bridge brackets the receding city—Morningside and midtown and the Village valley and Wall Street. What they see in the ground glass is a fifty-fifty ratio of concentrated city and tree-covered diabase-palisade cliffs, with a fjord running through."
"Under the Cloth" in Silk Parachute by John McPhee, p 133
In the Princeton huddle before play resumed, Bill Tierney studied Damien Davis, looking beyond his eyes and into his neurocity to see if maybe Damien —once burned, twice vulnerable—would prefer that Ryan Mollett cover Powell.
- Spin Right, Shoot Left -- in The Silk Parachute by John McPhee, p 95
Just wanted to chime in that the comment weirdness seems not just to be with nested quotes - double quotation marks seem not to be working at all for me, including when used in a href links, meaning I can't currently post a comment containing a link to anything outside of Wordnik. For now I can post things-that-look-like-double-quotes using code, e.g. & # 147 to make this: “ - but just using the double-quotation-mark key on the keyboard doesn't work.
"With the other children, I would run off and play among the harebells along the old sentry path. A mass of rubble, really, but the pillar of my enchanted world."
The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet, translated by Willard Wood, p 17
"There had apparently been vestments as well as wine in the envoy's luggage. The bishop's envoy wore a black velvet chasuble over his dazzlingly white vestments, and the monk was resplendent in yards of samite and gilt embroidery."
"Lady Eliwys brought me a brown wadmal kirtle and mustard-colored surcote to wear, and a sort of kerchief to cover my chopped-off hair (not a wimple and coif, so Eliwys must still think I'm a maiden, in spite of all Imeyne's talk about "daltrisses")."
I hadn't known the "private living quarters of the lord" sense of this word.
As in: "I remember a church, and I think this is a manor house. I'm in a bedroom or a solar, and it's not just a loft because there are stairs, so that means the house of a minor baron at least."
""I need to know the language and the customs," she said, leaning over Dunworthy's desk, "and the money and table manners and things. Did you know they didn't use plates? They used flat loaves of bread called manchets, and when they finished eating their meat, they broke them into pieces and ate them. I need someone to teach me things like that, so I won't make mistakes.""
""Somewhere in Scotland," he said bitterly. "And meanwhile, Gilchrist is sending Kivrin into a century which is clearly a ten, a century which had scrofula and the plague and burned Joan of Arc at the stake.""
"Profs who do schoolwork on Pollock look for photobooks on Orozco or Rothko (two tomfools who throw bold colors, blotch on blotch, onto tondos of dropcloth)."
According to Merriam-Webster, "a dose of a proprietary effervescent mixture used as a headache remedy, sedative, and antacid ; also : such a proprietary product".
"Zoos known to stock zoomorphs (crocs or komodos, coons or bonobos) show off odd fowl: condors, hoopoos, flocks of owls or loons (not flocks of rocs or dodos)."
"Scows from Toronto tow lots of logs thrown onto pontoons: tons of softwood, tons of cordwood — block on block of woof good for woodwork: boxwood, bowwood, dogwood, logwood (most sorts of wood sold to workfolks who work for old woodshops)."
According to the Tate: "Originally, a French term applied to the quiet domestic scenes of Bonnard and Vuillard. Since applied widely to any painting of such subject matter. An outstanding example is Gwen John."
"Sick with phthisis in this drizzling mist, I limp, sniffling, spitting bilic spit, itching livid skin (skin which is tingling with stinging pinpricks)."
"Is it this grim lich, which is writhing in its pit, lifting its lid with whitish limbs, rising, vivific, with ill will in its mind, victimizing kids timid with fright?"
"Midspring brings with it singing birds, six kinds (finch, siskin, ibis, tit, pipit, swift), whistling shrill chirps, trilling chirr chirr in high pitch."
"Greek schemers seek egress en ténèbres, then enter the melee — the welter where berserk tempers seethe whenever men's mettle, then men's fettle, gets tested; there, the Greek berserkers sever men's thews, then shred men's flesh."
"The December sleet drenches the tethered nets, then threshes the fettered pegs; hence, the deckmen wedge the kevels, then check the kedges; nevertheless, these vessels teeter."
"The steersmen steer the xebecs between steep, sheer clefts, where reefs prevent sheltered berth; there, the tempests whelm the decks, then wreck the keels — the helms, left crewless whenever the elements beset these crewmen."
"Hassan asks that a shaman abstract a talc cataplasm that can thwart a blatant rash (raw scars that can scar a man's scalp and gall a man's glans: scratch, scratch)."
"A Slav warman as gallant as Galahad (and D'Artagnan) clasps a scabbard and draws a katana that can smash a man's brassards and slash a man's flancards."
"Hawks and larks dart past tamaracks, as jackdaws and mallards flap past catalpas and land athwart a larch (sparhawks and caracaras scrawk at blackcaps and avadavats)."
"Hassan can watch as a marksman tracks a stag, a hart and a fawn, and at last bags a ram (a bwana as smart as Tarzan can trap all mammals: alpacas and llamas, caracals and pandas, aardvarks that can catch larval ants).
"Hassan can ask that a barman at a bar tap a cask and draw a man a draft (half a dram, a glass): marc, grappa and armagnac, malt, arrack and schnapps."
"Fans clap as a fat-cat jazzman and a bad-ass bassman blab gangsta rap — a gangland fad that attacks what Brahms and Franck call art: a Balkan czardas, a Tartar tandava (sarabands that can charm a saltant chap at a danza).
"A pagan skald chants a dark saga (a Mahabharata), as a papal cabal blackballs all annals and tracts, all dramas and psalms: Kant and Kafka, Marx and Marat."
""I've said too much," she said, flustered. "It's the sherry, you see. Alf always says as 'ow sherry coshes the guard what's supposed to be keepin' watch on my tongue.""
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, p 275
"Later, at the police station in the village, the Spitfire pilot paid me a visit. He was with a squadron based at Catterick, and had taken his machine up to check the controls after the mechanics had made a few adjustments. He had not the slightest intention of getting into a scrap that day, he told me, but there we were, Wolfgang and I, suddenly in his gunsights over Haworth. What else could he do?
'Hell of a prang. Bad luck, old chap.' he said. 'Damned sorry about your friend.'"
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, pp 216-217
"Excitedly, I added to the mixture a couple of drops of my homemade chloroform, which, since chloroform is not miscible in water, sank promptly to the bottom."
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, p 106
""Stage right," I said. "Behind the black tormentor curtains."
Rupert blinked once or twice, shot me a barbed look, and clattered back up the narrow steps to the stage. For a few moments we could hear him muttering away to himself up there, punctuated by the metallic sounds of panels being opened and slammed, and switches clicked on and off."
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, p 34
"He saw the orthodox priest arriving from the neighboring village after a long hike over hills and through rocky gullies. His floor-length black soutane was spattered up to the knee with yellow clay and pollen from the broom blossoms."
Don Juan: His Own Version by Peter Handke, translated by Krishna Winston, p 43
Whenever I see this word I want to say it in my head like "pole-ee-ax" even though I know it's not. I just came across it in a review in the New Yorker of a production of The Glass Menagerie.
"Her red hair is cut flat and short, and it occurs to Rose that if the girl waits long enough it'll actually come into fashion, especially if she had a tendency to hang around at the Snakepit and be a widgie. But she can't see it. Red has the look of a hopelessly sporty girl."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 294 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"She got friendly with a few decent-looking blokes who took her to the flicks at the Piccadilly or the Capitol and then shouted her a milkshake or a spider before putting her on the bus home."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 280 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
See Bodgies and Widgies: "Bodgies and Widgies refer to a youth subculture that existed in Australia and New Zealand in the 1950s, similar to the Teddy Boy culture in the UK or Greaser culture in the US. The males were called Bodgies and the females were called Widgies."
"It was the same blokes at the Embassy tonight, the larrikins in suits, the quiet movers with brandy on their breath and Brylcreem in their hair. The ones with vagrant hands, the ones with bad teeth, broken noses, feet like snowshoes, bellies like baskets."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 278 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"It's the smell of a karri forest rising into the sky and the bodies of roos and possums returning to the earth as carbon and the cooking smell falling through the dimness like this."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 184 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"They showed her where to get the best pie and chips in Murray Street, the very thought of which kept her off lunch in general, and they introduced Rose to the addiction of listening in. They were silly, dizzy scrubbers, and she liked them"
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, pp 181-182 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"It's ridiculous -- she's too old for him and he's a slow learner and a tenant and a Lamb, for gawdsake, but he's just the grousest looking boy, and his hot blue eyes make you go racy inside."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 159 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Now and then she'd find herself out the back lane against the fence with some sweetmouthed bloke whose name she could almost remember, a cove who didn't mind if she kept talking while he ran his hands about."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 153 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Ted was the old girl's favourite. Rose often saw her patting and stroking him when she was half shickered. Ted didn't seem to care what she did at all."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 142 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"The boat is a good sixteen feet, clinkerbuilt and heavy as hell. A big skiff sort of boat, and it takes about a second and a half for it to be obvious that it'll never fit across the tray of the truck."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 109 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"I didn't know you were married before, said Elaine, lips aquiver.
Eee-laine, you nong, said Hat. 1914 to 1918. She'd hafta start havin em at age twelve to get six out, not to mention one off to war. She was born the year of Federation, 1901.
Well, said Lester. Margaret River School obviously taught Hat more than groomin and deportation."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 71 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Oriel doesn't realize it, but she begins to dress Fish like an idiot, the way people clothe big sadfaced mongoloids. She hoiks his trousers up under his arms with a belt so long it flaps. She combs his hair straight down on this brow and shines his shoes till they mock him. The reason Oriel doesn't notice is that Quick gets to him early after breakfast and drags the clobber round on him, messes him up like a boy, normal and slouchy."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 70 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"By May, when a chill had come into the nights and the street was subdued and indoorsy after dark with the Lambs' chooks racked along their perch like mumbling hats, and the air so still you could hear the sea miles off and the river tide eating at the land, Lester and Oriel went to bed bonesore but grateful."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 63 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Red was just a tomboy, she didn't think about smiling or not smiling. There was a gap, now that Fish wasn't being the ratbag of the family, and Red was out to fill it. She beat boys at cricket and she terrorized the bike sheds at school with the way she could throw a punch."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 63 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"It was where you could smell that daft beanpole husband of hers baking his cakes, though, fair dinkum, you had to hand it to the coot, he could bake his way to Parliament if he set his mind to it."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 50 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"The huge livingroom window was gone and a shutter stood propped open in its place opening up on a view of that grand old room full of pineboard shelves bowing with jars and jugs, the fireplace bristling with humbugs and bullroarers and toothbusters."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 57 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"They'd worn a track across the weeds since dawn, and the cratchety tinkle of that little bell had driven her spare, but she wasn't going to go down there early and give her tenants the satisfaction of gloating."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 57 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"In the park at the end of the street the flame trees and the Moreton Bay figs covered the grass with their broad, brittle leaves that Dolly Pickles kicked up in drifts as she walked alone when the children were at school and she was waiting for the copper to boil in the laundry or she just couldn't stand to be in that big old place anymore, avoiding the plain gaze of that little Lamb woman as she went stiffbooted about her neverending business."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 52 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"That autumn the street seemed full. There were always Pickles kids and Lamb kids up one end of the street throwing boondies or chasing someone's dog."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 51 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Rose Pickles and her brothers saw them unloading the dust-white truck. They made a crowd standing about down there, and they looked so skinny and tired. They carried a big jarrah table in but no chairs. There were teachests, a clock, shovels and hoes, a couple of bashed old trunks. They all struggled and heaved up the stairs with that little woman barking instructions.
Cripes, Ted said. And I thought we looked like reffoes."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 50 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"And he'd lost his postcard from Egypt, the one he got from his dad's cousin, Earl. Back in '43 he wrote a letter to cheer up a digger. He addressed it: Earl Blunt, EGYPT, and it found him, just as he assumed it would. And a card came back, an exotic picture from another world. He'd stuck it somewhere secret and had bamboozled himself with his own cunning."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 46 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Down the middle of the yard, from the house to the back pickets, was a tin fence which cut the yard in half. The wooden frame was jarrah; it smelt of gum and was the colour of sunburn."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 44 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"She looks up and sees Lester and the boys hauling the net up onto the beach. The water is flat behind them. She can almost see the trees etched out on the other bank, the paperbarks where the dunes begin."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 28 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"This time the truck goes up the hill in reverse and the kids elbow each other and feel a right bunch of dags heading up like that, but they're the first to see the rivermouth, the oilstill river and roiling sea; it looks so like a picture they're suddenly quiet."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 26 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
Urban Dictionary says it's "Western Australian slang term for the "Southern Blue Pilchard", a small fish roughly 5-6 inches in length and commonly sold in large frozen blocks and used as bait by anglers, especially those fishing for tailor."
"When he baited up, the gang of hooks always slipped sideways in the mulie and ended up buried in his palm."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 21 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Dolly saw it was his right hand. His bloody working hand. A man could hardly pick his nose with a thumb and half a pointer. They were done for; stuffed, cactus."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 15 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Sam Pickles grew up on that racetrack, hanging around the stables or by the final turn where the Patterson's Curse grew knee high and the ground vibrated with all that passing flesh."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 11 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 1 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
"Be it salmon, skate, gammon or a silverside of beef, the ancient art of bringing something to tenderness by letting it blip and blop in not-quite-boiling water appeals not because of its robustness, but for its gentle tone."
"'Makes a nice luncheon dish,' say so many old cookery books, especially when talking of rissoles or stuffed marrow, or some other silk purse carefully hewn from a sow's ear."
"Those who peddle frozen fish clad in batter as thick as their shop's Formica counter tops, with jars of sad pickled eggs and a lone, armour-plated saveloy waiting patiently for someone drunk enough to order it, are still around."
Re: Branston Pickle: "Its manufacturers advise that their mud-hued, syrupy tracklement sits well with burgers and hot dogs, yet in truth most of it will find its way into cheese sandwiches."
"Cornwall's peel-flecked heavy cake would keep you going until you got to feast on Devon's cream-filled chudleighs, before moving swiftly along through treasures such as Somerset's crumbly catterns, Dorset apple, and the sultana-spiked Norfolk vinegar cake."
"And then, just as we Brits abandon our stew to the hungry hordes gathered at the table, the cooks of other nations will add a vital snap of freshness and vigour to lift it from its sleepy brown torpor: the French their persillade of vivid parsley, anchovy and lemon; the Moroccans a slick of tongue-tingling harissa the color of a rusty bucket; and the Italians a pool of hot, salty salsa verde pungent with basil, mustard, and mint."
"The Italians, though less likely to use alcohol, will add body to the simplest stew of boneless brisket with the introduction of a whole, cheap tongue and a gelatinous, collagen-rich cotechino sausage."
I don't think I'd ever heard "beard" used as a verb meaning "to confront boldly" until now:
"Already she was beginning to be carried away by the idea of bearding Gert Bigger in her den. She imagined herself armed with a great book from which she read strange grim-sounding incantations, magic words that would bring Gert Bigger to her knees and make her bring Mrs. Zimmermann back from . . . from wherever Gert Bigger had sent her."
The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring by John Bellairs, p 132 of the Puffin paperback edition.
"The party that night turned out to be so much fun that Rose Rita forgot all about her troubles. She even forgot that she was supposed to be mad at Lewis. Mrs. Zimmermann taught Lewis and Rose Rita a couple of new card games (klaberjass and six-pack bezique, Winston Churchill's favorite card game), and Jonathan did one of his magic illusions, where he made everyone think that they were stumping across the floor of the Atlantic in diving suits. They visited some sunken galleons and the wreck of the Titanic, and even watched an octopus fight."
The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring by John Bellairs, p 8 of the Puffin paperback edition
"As Lewis chanted, the room began to get darker. The light faded from the bright orange leaves of the maple tree outside, and now a strong wind was rattling the glass doors. Suddenly the doors flew open, and the wind got into the room. It riffled madly through the dictionary on the library table, scattered papers across the floor, and knocked all the lampshades galley-west."
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs, p 54 of the Puffin paperback edition
Lewis had the long curved parcel. When he had ripped the paper off one end, he saw the tarnished brass hilt of a sword. "Oh boy!" he said. "A real sword!" He ripped the rest of the paper off and started swinging the sword around. Fortunately, it was still in its sheath.
"Have at thee for a foul faytour!" he shouted, lunging at Rose Rita with the sword.
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs, p 19 of the Puffin paperback edition
"Mrs. Izard turned around. She faced Mrs. Zimmermann calmly. "So it's you," she said. "Well, my power has not reached its height, but I am still strong enough to deal with you. Aroint ye!"
She pointed the ivory cane at Mrs. Zimmermann. Nothing happened. She stopped smiling and dropped her cane."
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, by John Bellairs, p 152 of the Puffin Books paperback edition
"When spring came, Lewis was surprised to see that the hedge in front of the Hanchett house was wildly overgrown. It was a spiraea hedge, and had always had bristly little pink-and-white blossoms. This spring there were no blossoms on the hedge; it had turned into a dark, thorny thicket that completely hid the first floor windows and sent long waving tendrils up to scrape at the zinc gutter troughs. Burdocks and ailanthus trees had grown up overnight near the house; their branches screened the second-story windows."
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, by John Bellairs, p 122 of the Puffin Books paperback edition
"Old Isaac Izard—his name is odd, isn't it? Mrs. Zimmermann thinks that it comes from izzard, which in some parts of England is the word for zed, which is the word the English use to identify the letter Z. I go along with Mrs. Zimmermann's theory because I can't think of a better one. And besides, she is a Z-lady, so she should know."
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, by John Bellairs, p 33 of the Puffin Books paperback edition
"It was the belief that Robert had been loved, and loved for so long, by Rachel that had made her desire him, had made her reject more glittering matches; it seemed that he was making a sort of concession to her in marrying her."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 930 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"He spoke to no one but his wife; the rest of the hotel appeared not to exist for him; but whenever a waiter came to take an order, and stood close beside him, he swiftly raised his blue eyes and darted a glance at him which did not last for more than two seconds, but in its limpid penetration seemed to indicate a kind of investigative curiosity entirely different from that which might have inspired any ordinary diner scrutinising, even at greater length, a page or waiter with a view to making humorous or other observations about him which he would communicate to his friends."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 926 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"What is more, people whose own hearts are not directly involved always regard unfortunate entanglements, disastrous marriages, as though one were free to choose whom one loves, and do not take into account the exquisite mirage which love projects and which envelops so entirely and so uniquely the person with whom one is in love that the "folly" a man commits by marrying his cook or the mistress of his best friend is as a rule the only poetical action that he performs in the course of his existence."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 923 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"It is the wisdom inspired by the Muse whom it is best to ignore for as long as possible if we wish to retain some freshness of impressions, some creative power, but whom even those who have ignored her meet in the evening of their lives in the nave of an old country church, at a point when suddenly they feel less susceptible to the eternal beauty expressed in the carvings on the altar than to the thought of the vicissitudes of fortune which those carvings have undergone, passing into a famous private collection or a chapel, from there to a museum, then returning at length to the church, or to the feeling that as they walk around it they may be treading upon a flagstone almost endowed with thought, which is made of the ashes of Arnauld or Pascal, or simply to deciphering (forming perhaps a mental picture of a fresh-faced country girl) on the brass plate of a wooden prie-dieu the names of the daughters of the squire or the notable—the Muse who has gathered up everything that the more exalted Muses of philosophy and art have rejected, everything that is not founded upon truth, everything that is merely contingent, but that reveals other laws as well: the Muse of History."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 919 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"And then, you've talked so often to Saint-Loup about the hawthorns and lilacs and irises at Tansonville, he'll see what you meant now."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 918 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But even in the case of a man of real merit, it is a quality not to be despised by the person who admits him into his private life, and one that makes him particularly useful if he can also play whist."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 915 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"People still remembered that the most grandiose and glittering receptions in Paris, as brilliant as those given by the Princesse de Guermantes, had been those of Mme de Marsantes, Saint-Loup's mother."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 912 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"After walking across the garden of the Arena in the glare of the sun, I entered the Giotto chapel, the entire ceiling of which and the background of the frescoes are so blue that it seems as though the radiant daylight has crossed the threshold with the human visitor in order to give its pure sky a momentary breather in the coolness and shade, a sky merely of a slightly deeper blue now that it is rid of the glitter of the sunlight, as in those brief moments when, though no cloud is to be seen, the sun has turned its gaze elsewhere and the azure, softer still, grows deeper."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 878 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Finally, before leaving the picture, my eyes came back to the shore, swarming with the everyday Venetian life of the period. I looked at the barber wiping his razor, at the negro humping his barrel, at the Muslims conversing, at the noblemen in wide-sleeved brocade and damask robes and hats of cerise velvet, and suddenly I felt a slight gnawing at my heart."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 877 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"And during the few minutes that the Prince was standing beside their table, M. de Norpois never ceased for an instant to keep his azure pupils trained on Mme de Villeparisis, with the mixture of indulgence and severity of an old lover, but principally from fear of her committing one of those verbal solecisms which he had relished but which he dreaded."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 858 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But at the same time (because of the always urban character of the impressions which Venice gives almost in the open sea, on those waters whose ebb and flow makes itself felt twice daily, and which alternately cover at high tide and uncover and low tide the splendid outside stairs of the palaces), as we should have done in Paris on the boulevards, in the Champs-Elysées, in the Bois, in any wide and fashionable avenue, we passed the most elegant women in the hazy evening light, almost all foreigners, who, languidly reclining against the cushions of their floating carriages, followed one another in procession, stopped in front of a palace where they had a friend to call on, sent to inquire whether she was at home, and while, as they waited for the answer, they prepared to leave a card just in case, as they would have done at the door of the Hôtel de Guermantes, turned to their guidebooks to find out the period and the style of the palace, being shaken the while, as upon the crest of a blue wave, by the wash of the glittering, swirling water, which took alarm at finding itself pent between the dancing gondola and the resounding marble."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 852-853 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"When, at ten o'clock in the morning, my shutters were thrown open, I saw blazing there, instead of the gleaming black marble into which the slates of Saint-Hilaire used to turn, the golden angel on the campanile of St Mark's. Glittering in a sunlight which made it almost impossible to keep one's eyes upon it, this angel promised me, with its outstretched arms, for the moment when I appeared on the Piazzetta half an hour later, a joy more certain than any that it could ever in the past have been bidden to announce to men of good will."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 844 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The spray of syringa made me profoundly sad, as did also the thought that Albertine could have believed, and said, that I was treacherous and hostile; and most of all, perhaps, certain lies so unexpected that I had difficulty in grasping them."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 828 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Then I thought again of the evening of the syringa, and remembered that about a fortnight later, as my jealousy kept changing its object, I had asked Albertine whether she had ever had relations with Andrée, and she had replied: "Oh! never! Of course, I adore Andrée; I have a deep affection for her, but as I might have for a sister, and even if I had the tastes which you seem to suppose, she's the last person I should have thought of in that connexion. I can swear to you by anything you like, the honour of my aunt, the grave of my poor mother." I had believed her."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 827 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"At all events, nobody could ever mention syringa again in her hearing without her turning crimson and putting her hand over her face in the hope of hiding her blushes."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 813 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But we lost our heads all the same, so that to conceal our embarrassment we both of us, without having a chance to consult each other, had the same idea: to pretend to dread the scent of syringa which as a matter of fact we adored."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 812 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The memory of Albertine had become so fragmentary that it no longer caused me any sadness and was no more now than a transition to fresh desires, like a chord which announces a change of key."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 809 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The persistence within me of an old impulse to work, to make up for lost time, to change my way of life, or rather to begin to live, gave me the illusion that I was still as young as in the past; and yet the memory of all the events that had succeeded one another in my life (and also of those that had succeeded one another in my heart, for when one has greatly changed, one is misled into supposing that one has lived longer) in the course of those last months of Albertine's existence, had made them seem to me much longer than a year, and now this forgetfulness of so many things, separating me by gulfs of space from quite recent events which they made me think remote, because I had had what is called "the time" to forget them, by its fragmentary, irregular interpolation in my memory—like a thick fog at sea which obliterates all the landmarks—distorted, dislocated my sense of distance in time, contracted in one place, distended in another, and made me suppose myself now further away from things, now much closer to them, than I really was."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 802-803 of the Modern Library paperback edition
""Oh! not in the least," exclaimed Mme de Guermantes, who had a keen sense of these provincial differences and drew portraits that were sober and restrained but coloured by her husky, golden voice, beneath the gentle efflorescence of her violet-blue eyes."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 794 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"As for Gilberte, she was all the more glad to find the subject being dropped, in that she herself was only too anxious to drop it, having inherited from Swann his exquisite tact combined with a delightful intelligence that was recognised and appreciated by the Duke and Duchess, who begged her to come again soon."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 786 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"However, when Swann was dead, it happened that her determination not to know his daughter had ceased to provide Mme de Guermantes with all the satisfactions of pride, independence, "self-government" and cruelty which she was capable of deriving from it and which had come to an end with the passing of the man who had given her the exquisite sensation that she was resisting him, that he could not compel her to revoke her decrees."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 780 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"We have of the universe only inchoate, fragmentary visions, which we complement by arbitrary associations of ideas, creative of dangerous illusions."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 775 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Those passages which, when I wrote them, were so colourless in comparison with my thought, so complicated and opaque in comparison with my harmonious and transparent vision, so full of gaps which I had not managed to fill, that the reading of them was a torture to me, had only accentuated in me the sense of my own impotence and of my incurable lack of talent."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 770 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Which of us has not experienced in the course of his life exquisite uncertainties more or less similar to this? A charitable friend, to whom one describes a girl one has seen at a ball, concludes from the description that she must be one of his friends and invites one to meet her. But among so many others, and on the basis of a mere verbal portrait, is there not a possibility of error? The girl you are about to see may well turn out to be a different girl from the one you desire."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 761 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"It is the tragedy of other people that they are merely showcases for the very perishable collections of one's own mind. For this very reason one bases upon them projects which have all the fervour of thought; but thought languishes and memory decays: the day would come when I would readily admit the first comer to Albertine's room, as I had without the slightest regret given Albertine the agate marble or other gifts that I had received from Gilberte."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 751-752 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Gradually, as the love that Albertine may have felt for certain women ceased to cause me pain, it attached those women to my past, made them somehow more real, as the memory of Combray gave to buttercups and hawthorn blossom a greater reality than to unfamiliar flowers."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 746 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Hearing it from a neighbouring room without being able to see, one may mistake for uncontrollable laughter the noise which is forced by pain from a patient being operated on without an anaesthetic; and as for the noise emitted by a mother who has just been told that her child has died, it can seem to us, if we are unaware of its origin, as difficult to translate into human terms as the noise emitted by an animal or by a harp. It takes us a little time to realise that those two noises express what, by analogy with the (very different) sensations we ourselves may have felt, we call pain; and it took me some time, too, to understand that this noise expressed what, by analogy with the (very different) sensations I myself had felt, I called pleasure; and the pleasure must have been very great to overwhelm to this extent the person who was expressing it and to extract from her this strange utterance which seemed to describe and comment on all the phases of the exquisite drama which the young woman was living through and which was concealed from my eyes by the curtain that is for ever lowered for other people over what happens in the mysterious intimacy of every human creature."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 741-742 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Alas, remembering my own agitation whenever I had caught sight of a girl who attracted me, sometimes when I had merely heard her spoken of without having seen her, my anxiety to look my best, to show myself to advantage, my cold sweats, I had only, to torture myself, to imagine the same voluptuous excitement in Albertine, as though by means of the apparatus which, after the visit of a certain practitioner who had shown some scepticism about her malady, my aunt Léonie had wished to see invented, and which would enable the doctor to undergo all the sufferings of his patient in order to understand better."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 734 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"If the strength of my feelings made me regard as untruthful and colourless the expressions of men who had no true happiness or sorrow in their lives, on the other hand the most insignificant lines which could, however remotely, be related either to Normandy, or to Touraine, or to hydrotherapeutic establishments, or to Léa, or to the Princesse de Guermantes, or to love, or to absence, or to infidelity, at once brought back before my yes the image of Albertine, without my having the time to turn away from it, and my tears started afresh."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 704 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Then my tenderness could revive anew, but, simultaneously with it, a sorrow at being parted from Albertine which made me perhaps even more wretched than I had been during the recent hours when it had been jealousy that tormented me. But the latter suddenly revived at the thought of Balbec, because of the vision which all at once reappeared (and which until then had never made me suffer and indeed appeared one of the most innocuous in my memory) of the dining-room at Balbec in the evening, with all that populace crowded together in the dark on the other side of the window, as in front of the luminous wall of an aquarium, watching the strange creatures moving around in the light but (and this I had never thought of) in its conglomeration causing the fisher-girls and other daughters of the people to brush against girls of the bourgeoisie envious of that luxury, new to Balbec, from which, if not their means, at any rate parsimony and tradition excluded their parents, girls among whom there had certainly been almost every evening Albertine whom I did not know and who doubtless used to pick up some little girl whom she would meet a few minutes later in the dark, upon the sands, or else in a deserted bathing hut at the foot of the cliff."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 702-703 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"It is indeed probable that for Albertine, even if they had been true, even if she had admitted them, her own misdeeds (whether her conscience had thought them innocent or reprehensible, whether her sensuality had found them exquisite or somewhat insipid) would not have been accompanied by that inexpressible sense of horror from which I was unable to detach them."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 697 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The truth is that this woman has only raised to life by a sort of magic countless elements of tenderness existing in us already in a fragmentary state, which she has assembled, joined together, effacing every gap between them, and it is we ourselves who by giving her her features have supplied all the solid matter of the beloved object."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 679 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"When we speak of the "niceness" of a woman, we are doing no more perhaps than project outside ourselves the pleasure that we feel in seeing her, like children when they say: "My dear little bed, my dear little pillow, my dear little hawthorns." Which explains, incidentally, why men never say of a woman who is not unfaithful to them: "She is so nice," and say it so often of a woman by whom they are betrayed."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 670 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Either swift-moving and bent over the mythological wheel of her bicycle, strapped on rainy days inside the warrior tunic of her waterproof which moulded her breasts, her head turbaned and dressed with snakes, when she spread terror through the streets of Balbec; or else on the evenings when we had taken champagne into the woods of Chantepie, her voice provocative and altered, her face suffused with warm pallor, reddened only on the cheekbones, and when, unable to make it out in the darkness of the carriage, I drew her into the moonlight in order to see it more clearly, the face I was now trying in vain to recapture, to see again in a darkness that would never end. A little statuette on the drive to the island in the Bois, a still and plump face with coarse-grained skin at the pianola, she was thus by turns rain-soaked and swift, provoking and diaphanous, motionless and smiling, an angel of music."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 659 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But much later, when I went back gradually, in reverse order, over the times through which I had passed before I had come to love Albertine so much, when my healed heart could detach itself without suffering from Albertine dead, then I was able to recall at length without suffering that day on which Albertine had gone shopping with Françoise instead of remaining at the Trocadéro; I recalled it with pleasure as belonging to an emotional season which I had not known until then; I recalled it at last exactly, no longer injecting it with suffering, but rather, on the contrary, as we recall certain days in summer which we found too hot while they lasted, and from which only after they have passed do we extract their unalloyed essence of pure gold and indestructible azure."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 656 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"At last it was dark in the apartment; I stumbled against the furniture in the hall, but in the door that opened on to the staircase, in the midst of the darkness I had thought to be complete, the glazed panel was translucent and blue, with the blueness of a flower, the blueness of an insect's wing, a blueness that would have seemed to me beautiful had I not felt it to be a last glint, sharp as a steel blade, a final blow that was being dealt me, in its indefatigable cruelty, by the day."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 649 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"How often had I crossed, on the way to fetch Albertine, how often had I retrodden, on the way back with her, the great plain of Cricqueville, sometimes in foggy weather when the swirling mists gave us the illusion of being surrounded by a vast lake, sometimes on limpid evenings when the moonlight, dematerialising the earth, making it appear from a few feet away as celestial as it is, in the daytime, in the distance only, enclosed the fields and the woods with the firmament to which it had assimilated them in the moss-agate of a universal blue!"
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 648 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"She left the room, then returned, but I turned sharply away under the impact of the painful discharge of one of the thousand invisible memories which incessantly exploded around me in the darkness: I had noticed that she had brought me cider and cherries, things which a farm-lad had brought out to us in the carriage, at Balbec, "kinds" in which I should have made the most perfect communion, in those days, with the prismatic gleam in shuttered dining-rooms on days of scorching heat."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 646 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Now this love, born first and foremost of a need to prevent Albertine from doing wrong, this love had thereafter preserved the traces of its origin. Being with her mattered little to me so long as I could prevent the fugitive creature from going to this place or to that."
abrupt reaction of pain."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 585 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Every woman feels that the greater her power over a man, the more impossible it is to leave him except by sudden flight: a fugitive precisely because a queen."
abrupt reaction of pain."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 571-572 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But this knowledge, which the shrewdest perceptions of the mind would not have given me, had now been brought to me, hard, glittering, strange, like a crystallised salt, by the abrupt reaction of pain."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 564 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"I rang for Françoise to ask her to buy me a guidebook and a timetable, as I had done as a boy when already I wanted to prepare in advance a journey to Venice, the fulfilment of a desire as violent as that which I felt at this moment. I forgot that in the meantime, there was a desire which I had attained without any satisfaction—the desire for Balbec—and that Venice, being also a visible phenomenon, was probably no more able than Balbec to fulfil an ineffable dream, that of the Gothic age made actual by a springtime sea, that now teased my mind from moment to moment with an enchanted, caressing, elusive, mysterious, confused image."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 558 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Now that Albertine no longer appeared to be angry with me, the possession of her no longer seemed to me a treasure in exchange for which one is prepared to sacrifice every other. For perhaps one would have done so only to rid oneself of a grief, an anxiety, which are now appeased. One has succeeded in jumping through the calico hoop through which one thought for a moment that one would never be able to pass."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 556 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Likewise, too, no more than the seasons to its flowerless creeks, do modern times bring any change to the Gothic city; I knew it, even if I could not imagine it, or rather, imagining it, this was what I longed for with the same desire which long ago, when I was a boy, in the very ardour of departure, had broken and robbed me of the strength to make the journey: to find myself face to face with my Venetian imaginings, to observe how that divided sea enclosed in its meanderings, like the sinuosities of the ocean stream, an urbane and refined civilisation, but one that, isolated by their azure girdle, had evolved independently, had had its own schools of painting and architecture, to admire that fabulous garden of fruits and birds in coloured stone, flowering in the midst of the sea which kept it refreshed, lapped the base of the columns with its tide, and, like a sombre azure gaze watching in the shadows, kept patches of light perpetually flickering on the bold relief of the capitals."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 556 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But to me (just as an aroma, unpleasing perhaps in itself, of naphthalene and vetiver would have thrilled me by bringing back to me the blue purity of the sea on the day of my arrival at Balbec), the smell of petrol which, together with the smoke from the exhaust of the car, had so often melted into the pale azure on those scorching days when I used to drive from Saint-Jean-de-la-Haise to Gourville, since it had accompanied me on my excursions during those summer afternoons when I left Albertine painting, called into blossom now on either side of me, for all that I was lying in my darkened bedroom, corn-flowers, poppies and red clover, intoxicated me like a country scent, not circumscribed and fixed like that of the hawthorns which, held in by its dense, oleaginous elements, hangs with a certain stability about the hedge, but like a scent before which the roads sped away, the landscape changed, stately houses came hurrying to meet me, the sky turned pale, forces were increased tenfold, a scent which was like a symbol of elastic motion and power and which revived the desire that I had felt at Balbec to climb into the cage of steel and crystal, but this time no longer to pay visits to familiar houses with a woman I knew too well, but to make love in new places with a woman unknown."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 554-555 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"In my bedroom, where on the contrary it was cooler, when the unctuous air had succeeded in glazing and isolating the smell of the wash-stand, the smell of the wardrobe, the smell of the sofa, simply by the sharpness with which they stood out, vertical and erect, in adjacent but distinct slices, in a pearly chiaroscuro which added a softer glaze to the shimmer of the curtains and the blue stain armchairs, I saw myself, not by a mere caprice of my imagination but because it was physically possible, following, in some new suburban quarter like that in which Bloch's house at Balbec was situated, the streets blinded by the sun, and finding in them not the dull butchers' shops and the white freestone facings, but the country dining-room which I could reach in no time, and the smells that I would find there on my arrival, the smell of the bowl of cherries and apricots, the smell of cider, the smell of gruyère cheese, held in suspense in the luminous coagulation of shadow which they delicately vein like the heart of an agate, while the knife-rests of prismatic glass scatter rainbows athwart the room or paint the oilcloth here and there with peacock-eyes."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 553-554 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But even allowing for her lies, it was incredible how spasmodic her life was, how fugitive her strongest desires. She would be mad about a person whom, three days later, she would refuse to see. She could not wait for an hour while I sent out for canvas and colours, for she wished to start painting again. For two whole days she would be impatient, almost shed the tears, quickly dried, of an infant that has just been weaned from its nurse. And this instability of her feelings with regard to people, things, occupations, arts, places, was in fact so universal that, if she did love money, which I do not believe, she cannot have loved it for longer than anything else."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 552 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Looking back, I find it difficult to describe how densely her life was covered in a network of alternating, fugitive, often contradictory desires. No doubt falsehood complicated this still further, for, as she retained no accurate memory of our conversations, if, for example, she had said to me: "Ah! that was a pretty girl, if you like, and a good golfer," and, when I had asked the girl's name, had answered with that detached, universal, superior air of which no doubt there is always enough and to spare, for all liars of this category borrow it for a moment when they do not wish to answer a question, and it never fails them: "Ah, I'm afraid I don't know" (with regret at her inability to enlighten me), "I never knew her name, I used to see her on the golf course, but I didn't know what she was called"—if, a month later, I said to her: "Albertine, you remember that pretty girl you mentioned to me, who used to play golf so well," "Ah, yes," she would answer without thinking, "Emilie Daltier, I don't know what's become of her." And the lie, like a line of earthworks, was carried back from the defence of the name, now captured, to the possibilities of meeting her again."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 551 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But I hesitated for an instant, for the sky-blue border of her dress added to her face a beauty, a luminosity, without which she would have seemed to me harder."
birds, symbols of death and resurrection."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 538 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"I kissed her then a second time, pressing to my heart the shimmering golden azure of the Grand Canal and the mating birds, symbols of death and resurrection."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 538 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The Fortuny gown which Albertine was wearing that evening seemed to me the tempting phantom of that invisible Venice. It was overrun by Arab ornamentation, like Venice, like the Venetian palaces hidden like sultan's wives behind a screen of perforated stone, like the bindings in the Ambrosian Library, like the columns from which the oriental birds that symbolised alternatively life and death were repeated in the shimmering fabric, of an intense blue which, as my eyes drew nearer, turned into a malleable gold by those same transmutations which, before an advancing gondola, change into gleaming metal the azure of the Grand Canal. And the sleeves were lined with a cherry pink which is so peculiarly Venetian that it is called Tiepolo pink."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 531 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Her throat, the curve of which, seen from my bed, was strong and full, at that distance and in the lamplight appeared pinker, less pink however than her face, bent forward in profile, which my gaze, issuing from the innermost depths of myself, charged with memories and burning with desire, invested with such a brilliancy, such an intensity of life that its relief seemed to stand out and turn with the same almost magic power as on the day, in the hotel at Balbec, when my vision was clouded by my overpowering desire to kiss her; and I prolonged each of its surfaces beyond what I was able to see and beneath what concealed it from me and made me feel all the more strongly—eyelids which half hid her eyes, hair that covered the upper part of her cheeks—the relief of those superimposed planes; her eyes (like two facets that alone have yet been polished in the matrix in which an opal is still embedded), become more resistant than metal while remaining more brilliant than light, disclosed, in the midst of the blind matter overhanging them, as it were the mauve, silken wings of a butterfly placed under glass; and her dark, curling hair, presenting different conformations whenever she turned to ask me what she was to play next, now a splendid wing, sharp at the tip, broad at the base, black, feathered and triangular, now massing the contours of its curls in a powerful and varied chain, full of crests, of watersheds, of precipices, with its soft, creamy texture, so rich and so multiple, seeming to exceed the variety that nature habitually achieves and to correspond rather to the desire of a sculpture who accumulates difficulties in order to emphasise the suppleness, the vibrancy, the fullness, the vitality of his creation, brought out more strongly, but interrupting in order to cover it, the animated curve and, as it were, the rotation of the smooth, roseate face, with its glazed matt texture as of painted wood."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 515-516 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But whereas in memory this vagueness may be, if not fathomed, at any rate identified, thanks to a pinpointing of circumstances which explain why a certain taste has been able to recall to us luminous sensations, the vague sensations given by Vinteuil coming not from a memory but from an impression (like that of the steeples of Martinville), one would have had to find, for the geranium scent of his music, not a material explanation, but the profound equivalent, the unknown, colourful festival (of which his works seemed to be the disconnected fragments, the scarlet-flashing splinters), the mode by which he "heard" the universe and projected it far beyond himself."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 505 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"She chose pieces which were either quite new or which she had played to me only once or twice, for, beginning to know me better, she was aware that I liked to fix my thoughts only upon what was still obscure to me, and to be able, in the course of these successive renderings, thanks to the increasing but, alas, distorting and alien light of my intellect, to link to one another the fragmentary and interrupted lines of the structure which at first had been almost hidden in mist."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 501 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"It was no longer the same Albertine, because she was not, as at Balbec, incessantly in flight upon her bicycle, impossible to find owing to the number of little watering-places where she would go to spend the night with friends and where moreover her lies made it more difficult to lay hands on her; because, shut up in my house, docile and alone, she was no longer what at Balbec, even when I had succeeded in finding her, she used to be upon the beach, that fugitive, cautious, deceitful creature, whose presence was expanded by the thought of all those assignations which she was skilled in concealing, which made one love her because they made one suffer and because, beneath her coldness to other people and her casual answers, I could sense yesterday's assignation and tomorrow's, and for myself a sly, disdainful thought; because the sea breeze no longer puffed out her skirts; because, above all, I had clipped her wings, and she had ceased to be a winged Victory and become a burdensome slave of whom I would have liked to rid myself."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 500-501 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"So that, as I raised my eyes for one last look from the outside at the window of the room in which I should presently find myself, I seemed to behold the luminous gates which were about to close behind me and of which I myself had forged, for an eternal slavery, the inflexible bars of gold."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 445 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The carriage drove off. I remained for a moment alone on the pavement. It was true that I endowed those luminous streaks which I could see from below, and which to anyone else would have seemed quite superficial, with the utmost plenitude, solidity, and volume, because of all the significance that I placed behind them, in a treasure unsuspected by the world which I had hidden there and from which those horizontal rays emanated, but a treasure in exchange for which I had forfeited my freedom, my solitude, my thought."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 444-445 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The exciting new storytelling form, barely a century old, was adapted from the European novels that European armies brought in their wake: Napoleon's troops were in Cairo for three years, but, thanks to Egypt's Paris-worshipping nineteenth-century khedives, Balzac and Zola stayed for good."
-- Claudia Roth Pierpont, in "Found in Translation" in The New Yorker's January 18, 2010 issue.
"From his smile, a tribute to the defunct salon which he saw with his mind's eye, I understood that what Brichot, perhaps without realising it, preferred in the old drawing-room, more than the large windows, more than the gay youth of his hosts and their faithful, was that unreal aspect (which I myself could discern from certain similarities between La Raspelière and the Quai Conti) of which, in a drawing-room as in everything else, the actual, external aspect, verifiable by everyone, is but the prolongation, the aspect which has detached itself from the outer world to take refuge in our soul, to which it gives as it were a surplus-value, in which it is absorbed into its habitual substance, transforming itself—houses that have been pulled down, people long dead, bowls of fruit at suppers which we recall—into that translucent alabaster of our memories of which we are incapable of conveying the colour which we alone can see, so that we can truthfully say to other people, when speaking of the past, that they can have no conception of them, that they are unlike anything they have seen, and that we ourselves cannot inwardly contemplate without a certain emotion, reflecting that it is on the existence of our thoughts that their survival for a little longer depends, the gleam of lamps that have been extinguished and the fragrance of arbours that will never bloom again."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 379 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The electric lights would have fused, the pastries would not have arrived in time, the orangeade would have given everybody a stomach-ache. She was the one person not to have here. At the mere sound of her name, as in a fairy-tale, not a note would have issued from the brass; the flute and the oboe would have suddenly lost their voices."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 367 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"And no doubt they ought to have forgone the voluptuous pleasure of that sacrilege, but it did not express the whole of their natures."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 348 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"But very soon, the triumphant motif of the bells having been banished, dispersed by others, I succumbed once again to the music; and I began to realise that if, in the body of this septet, different elements presented themselves one after another to combine at the close, so also Vinteuil's sonata and, as I later discovered, his other works as well, had been no more than timid essays, exquisite but very slight, beside the triumphal and consummate masterpiece now being revealed to me."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 335 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The cellist was hunched over the instrument which he clutched between his knees, his head bowed forward, his coarse features assuming an involuntary expression of disgust at the more mannerist moments; another leaned over his double bass, fingering it with the same domestic patience with which he might have peeled a cabbage, while by his side the harpist, a mere child in a short skirt, framed behind the diagonal rays of her golden quadrilateral, recalling those which, in the magic chamber of a sibyl, arbitrarily denote the ether according to the traditional forms, seemed to be picking out exquisite sounds here and there at designated points, just as though, a tiny allegorical goddess poised before the golden trellis of the heavenly vault, she were gathering, one by one, its stars."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 334 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"My joy at having rediscovered it was enhanced by the tone, so friendly and familiar, which it adopted in addressing me, so persuasive, so simple, and yet without subduing the shimmering beauty with which it glowed."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 332 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"As when, in a stretch of country which one thinks one does not know and which in fact one has approached from a new direction, after turning a corner one finds oneself suddenly emerging on to a road every inch of which is familiar, but one had simply not been in the habit of approaching it that way, one suddenly says to oneself: "Why, this is the lane that leads to the garden gate of my friends the X----s; I'm only two minutes from their house," and there, indeed, is their daughter who has come out to greet one as one goes by; so, all of a sudden, I found myself, in the midst of this music that was new to me, right in the heart of Vinteuil's sonata; and, more marvellous than any girl, the little phrase, sheathed, harnessed in silver, glittering with brilliant sonorities, as light and soft as silken scarves, came to me, recognisable in this new guise."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 331-332 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Mme Verdurin sat alone, the twin hemispheres of her pale, slightly roseate brow magnificently bulging, her hair drawn back, partly in imitation of an eighteenth-century portrait, partly from the need for coolness of a feverish person reluctant to reveal her condition, aloof, a deity presiding over the musical rites, goddess of Wagnerism and sick-headaches, a sort of almost tragic Norn, conjured up by the spell of genius in the midst of all these "bores," in whose presence she would scorn even more than usual to express her feelings upon hearing a piece of music which she knew better than they."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 331 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Does a toque really suit that enormous head of hair which a kakochnyk would set off to full advantage?"
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 294 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Our shadows, now parallel, now close together and joined, traced an exquisite pattern at our feet."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 227 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Before that hour drew near, we had a spell of chiaroscuro, because after we had driven as far as the Seine, where Albertine admired, and by her presence prevented me from admiring, the reflexions of red sails upon the wintry blue of the water, and a tiled house nestling in the distance like a single red poppy against the clear horizon of which Saint-Cloud seemed, further off still, to be the fragmentary, friable, ribbed petrifaction, we left our motor-car and walked a long way."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 227 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"It was definitive, for the lady had returned perhaps to Balbec, had registered perhaps, on the luminous and echoing beach, the absence of Albertine; but she was unaware that the girl was living with me, was wholly mine."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 226 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The cooking and eating of food thus became deeply implicated in the cultural politics of bhadralok nationalism."
-- from the abstract of "Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal" by Jayanta Sengupta, in Modern Asian Studies volume 44, issue 1: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X09990072
"'All the poetry that the old quarters contain has been squeezed out to the last drop, but if you look at some of the houses that have been built lately for well-to-do tradesmen in the new districts, where the stone is all freshly cut and still to white, don't they seem to rend the torrid midday air of July, at the hour when the shopkeepers go home to lunch in the suburbs, with a cry as sharp and acidulous as the smell of the cherries waiting for the meal to begin in the darkened dining-room, where the prismatic glass knife-rests throw off a multicoloured light as beautiful as the windows of Chartres?'"
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 218 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"I had barely time to make out, being separated from them by the glass of the car as effectively as I should have been by that of my bedroom window, a young fruit-seller, or a dairymaid, standing in the doorway of her shop, illuminated by the sunshine like a heroine whom my desire was sufficient to launch upon exquisite adventures, on the threshold of a romance which I should never know."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 216 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Our motor-car sped along the boulevards and the avenues, whose rows of houses, a pink congelation of sunshine and cold, reminded me of my visits to Mme Swann in the soft light of her chrysanthemums, before it was time to ring for the lamps."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 216 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The other musician, he who was delighting me at the moment, Wagner, retrieving some exquisite fragment from a drawer of his writing-table to introduce it, as a retrospectively necessary theme, into a work he had not even thought of at the time he composed it, then having composed a first mythological opera, and a second, and afterwards others still, and perceiving all of a sudden that he had written a tetralogy, must have felt something of the same exhilaration as Balzac when the latter, casting over his books the eye at once of a stranger and of a father, finding in one the purity of Raphael, in another the simplicity of the Gospel, suddenly decided, shedding a retrospective illumination upon them, that they would be better brought together in a cycle in which the same characters would reappear, and touched up his work with a swift brush-stroke, the last and the most sublime."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 205 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"However much she tried to conceal her awareness of it, it bathed her, enveloped her, vaporous, voluptuous, made her whole face glow."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 193 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"I remembered the distress that I felt when I saw her face subjected to an active scrutiny, like that of a painter preparing to make a sketch, entirely enveloped in it, and, doubtless on account of my presence, submitting to this contact without appearing to notice it, with a passivity that was perhaps clandestinely voluptuous."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 192 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Surrounding both myself and Albertine there had been this morning (far more than the sunny day) that environment which itself is invisible but through the translucent and changing medium of which we saw, I her actions, she the importance of her own life—that is to say those beliefs which we do not perceive but which are no more assimilable to a pure vacuum than is the air that surrounds us; composing round about us a variable atmosphere, sometimes excellent, often unbreathable, they deserve to be studied and recorded as carefully as the temperature, the barometric pressure, the season, for our days have their own singularity, physical and moral."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 191 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"I raised my eyes to those flavescent, frizzy locks and felt myself caught in their swirl and swept away, with a throbbing heart, amid the lightning and the blasts of a hurricane of beauty."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 185 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"In doing so I was like Elstir, who, obliged to remain closeted in his studio, on certain days in spring when the knowledge that the woods were full of violets gave him a hunger to see some, used to send his concierge out to buy him a bunch; and then it was not the table upon which he had posed the little floral model, but the whole carpet of undergrowth where in other years he had seen, in their thousands, the serpentine stems bowed beneath the weight of their tiny blue heads, that Elstir would fancy that he had before his eyes, like an imaginary zone defined in his studio by the limpid odour of the evocative flower."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 178 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Besides, in the state of limpid unreason that precedes these heavy slumbers, if fragments of wisdom float there luminously, if the names of Taine and George Eliot are not unknown, the waking state remains none the less superior to the extent that it is possible to continue it every morning, but not to continue the dream life every night."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 155-156 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The iron shutters of the baker's shop and of the dairy, which had been lowered last night over every possibility of feminine bliss, were now being raised, like the canvas of a ship that is getting under way and about to set sail across the transparent sea, on to a vision of young shopgirls."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 144 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Then her sleep would seem to me a marvellous and magic world in which at certain moments there rises from the depths of the barely translucent element the avowal of a secret which we shall not understand."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 144 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"When Albertine came back to my room, she was wearing a black satin dress which had the effect of making her seem paler, of turning her into the pallid, intense Parisian woman, etiolated by lack of fresh air, by the atmosphere of crowds and perhaps by the practice of vice, whose eyes seemed the more uneasy because they were not brightened by any colour in her cheeks."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 127-128 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Between the two Balbec settings, so different one from the other, there was an interval of several years in Paris, the long expanse of which was dotted with all the visits that Albertine had paid me. I saw her in the different years of my life occupying, in relation to myself, different positions which made me feel the beauty of the intervening spaces, that long lapse of time during which I had remained without seeing her and in the diaphanous depths of which the roseate figure that I saw before me was carved with mysterious shadows and in bold relief. This was due also to the superimposition not merely of the successive images which Albertine had been for me, but also of the great qualities of intelligence and heart, and of the defects of character, all alike unsuspected by me, which Albertine, in a germination, a multiplication of herself, a fleshy efflorescence in sombre colours, had added to a nature that formerly could scarcely have been said to exist, but was now difficult to plumb."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 83 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"The fugitive and fragmentary pleasure, compounded of mystery and sensuality, which I had felt at Balbec, on the night when she had come to sleep at the hotel, had been completed and stabilised, filling my hitherto empty dwelling with a permanent store of domestic, almost conjugal, ease that radiated even into the passages and upon which all my senses, either actively or, when I was alone, in imagination as I awaited her return, peacefully fed."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 69 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"I do not say that a day will not come when, even to these luminous girls, we shall assign sharply defined characters, but that will be because they will have ceased to interest us, because their entry upon the scene will no longer be, for our heart, the apparition which it expected to be different and which, each time, leaves it overwhelmed by fresh incarnations."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 79 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"We have been told that some pretty girl is tender, loving, full of the most delicate feelings. Our imagination accepts this assurance, and when we behold for the first time, beneath the woven girdle of her golden hair, the rosy disc of her face, we are almost afraid that this too virtuous sister, cooling our ardour by her very virtue, can never be to us the lover for whom we have been longing. What secrets, however, we confide to her from the first moment, on the strength of that nobility of heart, what plans we make together! But a few days later, we regret that we were so confiding, for the rosy-cheeked girl, at our second meeting, addresses us in the language of a lascivious Fury. As for the successive facets which after pulsating for some days the roseate light, now eclipsed, presents to us, it is not even certain that a momentum external to these girls has not modified their aspect, and this might well have happened with my band of girls at Balbec."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 77-78 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"On this particular evening, Mme de Guermantes had given me, knowing that I was fond of them, some branches of syringa which had been sent to her from the South. When I left her and went upstairs to our flat, Albertine had already returned, and on the staircase I ran into Andrée, who seemed to be distressed by the powerful smell of the flowers that I was bringing home."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 63-64 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"I wanted to know the original spelling of the name Jean. I learned it when I received a letter from a nephew of Mme de Villeparisis who signs himself—as he was christened, as he figures in the Almanach de Gotha—Jehan de Villeparisis, with the same handsome, superfluous, heraldic h that we admire, illuminated in vermilion or ultramarine, in a Book of Hours or in a stained-glass window."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 39 of the Modern Library paperback edition
I had no recollection of having looked this word up before, but apparently I did! Yet again I encountered it in the sense of "fatten" and was surprised. In The Captive by Proust: "Then, like a famished convalescent already battening upon all the dishes that are still forbidden him ..."
"The sun's rays fell upon my bed and passed through the transparent shell of my attenuated body, warmed me, made me glow like crystal."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 25 of the Modern Library paperback edition
yarb, excellent! I started The Captive in September but didn't get very far, then kept getting distracted by library books. Now I'm on vacation, which means lots of reading time.
"The windows of our respective bathrooms, so that their occupants might not be visible from without, were not smooth and transparent but crinkled with an artificial and transparent hoar-frost. All of a sudden, the sun would colour this muslin glass, gild it, and, gently disclosing in my person an earlier young man whom habit had long concealed, would intoxicate me with memories, as though I were in the heart of the country amidst golden foliage in which even a bird was not lacking."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 3 of the Modern Library paperback edition
"Fifty years before, the glassmaking priest and alchemist Antonio Neri had been enticed into the Antwerp house of the Portuguese nobleman Emanuel Zimines and persuaded to write out his spagyrical secrets in a book published in Florence in 1612 called The Art of Glass."
"Virginia Woolf had once described the riverbanks as being on fire on either side of the Cam, but there was no such fire here now. Or at least not yet. There was red—rowan berries, rose hips, pyracanthas—but the red sat against the astonishing palette of autumn green like the sparks of a newly lit fire, like drops of crimson blood in the hedgerows."
"OK. How did he make red?" Was she laughing at me?
"Can't quite remember. Yes, I can." Blurred words came into focus. "Sheep's blood drained into a bladder, hung out to dry in the sun to make a powder, then mixed with alum water when needed. There was another one in which you boil brasill, whatever that is, and then he writes that if you would have it a 'sad red,' mingle it with potash water; if a light red, temper it with white lead. Christ, I've only read the transcription of that notebook once and I remember it all. What do you think a 'sad red' is?"
"My epiphenomenal faces retract, and no longer a metal dancer at the hub of a wheel, I take a step, diminish in size, stumble, stoop, fumble on the floor for my robe, laugh a silly laugh, thoroughly un-tranced."
Forgetting Elena by Edmund White, p 130 of the Vintage International paperback edition
"A final flight, short and narrow, as though it were the last resistance to gravity the structure could come up with, passes through glass doors to an open balcony overlooking a charming old garden of chinaberries and variegated mosses and birches peeling in papery white tatters around a pool that undoubtedly spells out a word like heart or mind but has been allowed to revert so thoroughly to nature that its letters, like the snow-weathered features of a marble bust, have lapsed into incoherence."
Forgetting Elena by Edmund White, p 69 of the Vintage International paperback edition
"Too many things were happening at once. Quentin's stomach clenched when he realized an elf had singled Alice out and was advancing across the dry basin toward her, twirling a long straight knife—were they called poniards?—in each hand."
"Magic," Richard announced slowly, flushed, "is the tools. Of the Maker." He almost never drank, and two glasses of viognier had put him well over his limit. He looked first left and then right to make sure the whole table was listening. What a fatuous ass."
Comments by knitandpurl
Show previous 200 comments...
knitandpurl commented on the word orlop
"The Lucy left Plymouth Harbor under steam (somewhere below deck—Lenox suspected it was in the orlop, but couldn't feel sure—men were shoveling coal as if their lives depended on it) about an hour later."
A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch, p 33
January 3, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word bouleversement
"We had thought these bouleversements might cease, but the deaths of our men…this is where we need you to step in."
A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch, p 23
January 2, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word marula
"Some trees provided fruit: tamarind, marula, raisinier, custard apple."
- "The Great Oasis" by Burkhard Bilger, p 120 of the December 19 & 26, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
January 1, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word harmattan
"The noonday sun could send temperatures soaring to a hundred and fifteen degrees and a hot harmattan wind blew down from the desert."
- "The Great Oasis" by Burkhard Bilger, p 116 of the December 19 & 26, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
January 1, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word ruderal
"Rafinesque perfected his variant of this honorable philosophy while botanizing in the literal backyards of my childhood, examining ruderal plants I've known all my life, and so I have appropriated it from him, with minor tweaks."
John Jeremiah Sullivan, quoted in "Reality Effects" by James Wood, p 136 of the December 19 & 26, 2011 issue of The New Yorker
January 1, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word brise-soleil
"Failing to be uplifted by white columns or the vertical thrust of the hall's backbone, he dwelled instead on how the opening of the brise-soleil, the structure above the building so reminiscent of a whale's tail just before a long submersion, left those inside both exposed—and trapped."
Sleight by Kirsten Kaschock, p 59
December 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word sefirot
"In the middle of the final series—1st sefirot, fortress, sacri-fly, infold, purl, 2nd sefirot, j-ladder (5) —Clef felt the alien tug.
(5) Recent additions to sleight vocabulary have come from varied disciplines. Hands have reenvisioned structures from molecular biology, Kabbalah, psychoanalysis, physics, Vodou, baseball, astronomy, rock art, the I Ching, chemistry, and knitting."
Sleight by Kirsten Kaschock, p 30
December 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word negus
"There was no reply to his question, however, and he went back to reading, occasionally pausing to sip the hot negus that had gone lukewarm as he worked."
The Fleet Street Murders by Charles Finch, p 3
December 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word subfusc
"Many of them were wearing the undergraduate subfusc, in various states of dishevelment."
The September Society by Charles Finch, p 31
December 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word beak
I didn't know the sense of "schoolmaster" 'til now.
As in: "At his school, Harrow, one of the beaks from his house, Druries (where Lord Byron had been, not to mention Lord Palmerston, who had died only a year before), had noticed Lenox's height and asked him to come row for the house team."
The September Society by Charles Finch, p 14
December 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word apotropaic
"A forty-dollar tangerine of nutmeat
ribboned by slender Greek
fingers of lovers so charmed
his coiffed stubble matched her armpit hairs
was handed to me, apotropaically,"
from "Epicurean" by Danielle Chapman, in the New Yorker, p 97 of the November 21, 2011 issue
December 8, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mort
"'It's a mort o' snow,' he said, somehow making it official. 'A mighty mort o' snow.'"
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley, p 130
November 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word quod
"'But the old woman — Lady Gawd 'elp us — 'as put 'er old man in quod.'"
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 299 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word fritinancy
"'The native thought of mankind is gratitude. The most significant noise of earth is the singing of birds,' said the professor with determination.
'Fritinancy,' declared the young man beside the fire.
'What's that?' said the professor.
'I said fritinancy. which is the whimper of gnats and the buzzing of flies. You're talking nonsense.'"
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, pp 281-282 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word anastomose
"But age comes quickest and most irremediable to mechanical things. The life of a sparking-plug is a fierce tropical existence of days only. No healing leucocytes rush to the aid of a cracked cylinder, nor anastomosing tributaries expand to carry the life-blood of a choked feed-pipe."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, pp 279-280 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word corposant
"Saturday poked them with his fingers, and as he did so, a line or two shone brightly in the quick fire. 'The corposants burnt blue on every mast,' he read."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 129 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word niblick
"Joan Benbow, driving ambitiously, had watched her ball land, leap forward in a series of diminishing arcs, and come to rest in Hibbett's Hole. (Hibbett was a Victorian golfer, one of John Company's colonels, who died in harness, his enlarged spleen bursting almost simultaneously with a good niblick in the bunker now called after him.)"
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 94 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word strout
"They might be charming fellows, of course. Great, noisy children, now laughing full-heartedly, now piteously seeking comfort and dimly knowing in their wise Slave hearts—were they Slavs?—that no one on earth could comfort them. Children of the steppes who would never grow up. But they grew beards, damn them. Great strouting bristle-patches of beards."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 55 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kibe
"Fool: If a man's brains were in's heels, were't not in danger of kibes?
Lear: Ay, boy."
- Shakespeare, quoted as epitaph to Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater
November 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word iridology
"A lifelong sufferer from psychosomatic illnesses, he was also an enthusiastic supporter of homeopathy, iridology and vegetarianism, as well as professing an interest in astrology and dream interpretation."
Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James Attlee, p 250
November 20, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gamboge
"The lessons begin with exhaustive lists of colours — Gamboge, Indian Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre — with notes on combining them and colour wheels to show how they relate to one another."
Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James Attlee, p 62
November 15, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word wyvern
"The suspended creatures turn their heads in the direction of the ghost in their midst. Gryphons and foxes and wyverns stare at him with glossy black eyes."
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, p 117
October 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word acer
"When I look up, I see a faint wash of pale green across the poplars and the blue crocuses make fairy rings round the base of the acer trees."
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill, p 80 of the Profile Books paperback
October 17, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word prebendary
"I turn over twice, bed of embers, taken in by risk, violated by the speed of this century that has turned the heads of so many ardent worshipers of the State, God of Modern Times, on a quest for progress; Italy lulled by fascination for manufacture, signing pacts with flash-in-the-pan figures who ransacked their revolutionary period: sucked into the trajectory of bolstering the State and corrupting it in the process, creativity abandoned in sinecure and prebendary to set off in discovery of the proletarian era, with its canned announcements, lunar conquests, poetically inspired factories, how far we have drifted from that initial project that with millions in voice and deed made the country tremble, now returning to dissidence: Malevich, Mayakovsky, whose images and words capture oblivion, injecting us, in proletarian zeal, with the elixir that will purge us of our mystical vanity."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 237 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kashf
"Those who can read shall read, and leave commentary to the others. To the first, joy is limited to reading, deciphering the sign; for the others the satisfaction and nourishment of their intelligence is achieved beyond: by interpretation, by unveiling, kashf."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 231 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word acroterion
See citation on mafraj.
October 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mafraj
"Like the time in San'ā, at the close of an evening of qāt, relaxing mafraj brightened by polychrome windows, leaving at dawn, garden, circular openings, rings and acroteria, lacy cornices, walking to Hammam al-Maydān, dome and cistern, spray of water falling into concentric traces of itself, pool receiving reflection of sunbeam."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 215 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word apodyterium
"Apodyterium where women and adolescent girls shine, beauty assured, prey ravished the previous night from beyond the medina's boundary, in the new quarter, Rue de Serbie between the central market and the train station, behind the French Embassy, hair salon for well-born ladies, mistresses, and high society insiders, antechamber of the State, orgiastic pleasure palace, sex without despair, consume now, pay later, hairdresser as madam, inventing new couplings then undoing them, cashing in, or not, on the goodwill of bodies, we merge into sex for sale, soft bed for softer breasts, finding mother in woman, ignoring her fervor, offering ourselves up as products of exchange: generosity that reifies what little remains of the body, experimenting with the self as other; backsliding patriarchs, recalcitrant Messalinas: get back to the vengeful Bedouin Eros, squall that leaves nothing behind but a body now neutralized; women, split from your new alliances, surrender yourselves as demons even more debased than your city-dwelling sisters, take on the roving eye and daring of men: woman is an other."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 213 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word adab
"Your family name, however, is another matter: originally Mu'addib, schoolmaster, teacher, prescriber of knowledge for its proper usage in society, dispenser of adab, a purveyor by name of good breeding and official culture, for the training of scribes and other executives of Arab power."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 207 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word aetites
"May I suggest some samples of my remedies: I can tell you that sage loosens the tongue, kindles affection; and that hollowed-out aetites stones, when shaken like rattles, then placed on a woman in labor, will make for a quick delivery; likewise, rose of Jericho, macerated and then taken in liquid form, can also ease delivery for those of you ladies looking to bear children; donkey and horse hooves will likewise make birthing far less arduous, without exhaustion or excessive strain."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 199 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mashrabiya
"Labyrinth that lightens the oppressiveness squeezing the house's heart, that bruised organ; in the back, a trellis guides a tree, split Y-shaped to climb skyward on either side of a mashrabiya, stark monument."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 196 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word francolin
"As for the male storytellers, let them learn a new trade, says Bakhta, chewing on the roasted thigh of a francolin hunted by our commandos around Tburba."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 186 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kerria
"Here writing the text in Paris, swapping the anxiety of a vegetative state—progressing extravagantly—for kerria bouquets of text, great golden bunches naming the self, intermingled discipline of questioning, perfected into something other than a string of exiles, banishment, migration: rather, living in search of an excuse to sail off and prosper as a merchant in Ecuador, for example, fleeing one's own haunted existence, stating lopsidedly once again the struggle against the impossible, happy not to own up to oneself, namely, a destiny of dullness."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 175 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word entasis
"Fātima steps over those motionless bodies caught up in what they're protesting; following in Fātima's footsteps, I enter the high-ceilinged room, airy and light, slender columns, exaggerated by entasis, shaft topped by a capital, a typically Tunisoise interpretation of composite order, the capital itself topped by a tall impost."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 173 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word calotte
"This Ba'adiyīn cupola, petals brightly salient on the calotte, a play of walls and openings, image of seashell and grape leaf, gathering their compartments into a central stem ending in the cupola faced with volutes, plaster worked into floral patterns, itself receptacle of figures, broken lines, curves and inter-curves, arabesque of line projected into space, perfect Almoravid accomplishment based upon the transposition of the principles of Islamic decoration, flora and planar geometry, to an architecture lending volume to flat motifs, rutilant container, a balance of breaches cleverly circulating blue sky: what uncertain solitude, what southerliness made possible this achievement by interpretation of register, audacity of one who emerges from the desert to impose the notion of unification, to attain an ideal to be formulated centuries later by a Borromini, a Guarini, to celebrate by monument the feast of Catholic power, triumphant propagator of faith after overcoming its schismatic trauma?"
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 160-161 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 30, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word fatiha
"Fez shines with a light unattainable elsewhere. Some of its gatherings are truly worthy of admiration; I'll say nothing of the sacred intensity of the patron saint's mausoleum where votive offerings pile up, Moulay Driss, fātiha of the perverse, nor will I go on about the ironwork, paintings, the delicacy of its architectures, medersas and mosques more so than its palaces; and its artisans, manual or mental, certainly do take one to a higher plane: that weaver who took you in and spoke in inflammatory terms, that other host who took up residence in Fez after unraveling many of the mysteries and ambiguities hidden in the landscape that it occupies: think of the Swiss convert who pursued the tradition of certain nineteenth-century English alchemists, and who came to live in Fez, peace and quiet for anyone who believes in the possibility of social noninterference and the marginality to revive, through the body and the city, a tradition that has elsewhere disappeared."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 156-157 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 30, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word corniche
"This street attracts dust, but I wouldn't trade it for the corniche road that makes the Nile unreal, flaming like some fake sunset. They built it a few years back: ever since Russians started arriving by the thousands to build the dam, the city has completely changed."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 140 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word theriac
"Spectacle of vengeance and loathing, I remember my youth and the hilqa tradition, circular gatherings at Rahbat al-Ghanam, the eating of a live scorpion, treacherously struggling between the swallower's teeth: I don't deserve the sting you've inflicted, he shouts! Secure in his rights and in his organism's immunity thanks to vast experience with venomous stings and bites, deadly to the uninitiated, he raged and bit down on the creature, hideous cracking, attenuated by the highly active theriac, an ancestral potion in use among those who fraternize with venom-dispensing reptiles: solidarity, philter of perils, syrup mixed with blood such that the body adapts unharmed to more lethal toxins."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 134 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bister
"The bard's voice slows down and, after the unfathomable and contradictory flow of words, grows vindictive, blaming all the opposing currents that crisscross the hall, sound like light filtering through in equal measure, music of the heavens where each beam by its sound fools the ear or lulls it into sleep: various shafts of light play upon the exalted heads, upon the symbols of each guild in bright, primary colors, a dominant green, deep as inexpressible blue, a quiver running through the branches of a century-old cedar; red, of neither fire nor blood, the deep shade of habit, restful to the eye; white encircling waves, desert effluvia; black, to obscure the names on tombs by night at the unheralded hour of sanctification that weight upon shoulders, burnūs of lemony wool with a fringe curiously embroidered with bister bees, with glitter-tipped emeralds."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 126 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tarab
"Outside, musicians, placard carriers, and guildsmen are jostling, intense crowd of a thousand hues, discrete voices intoning improvisations, each flowing autonomous, an effortless tarab, barely contained joy."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 124 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tarab
tarab.ie says ""Tarab" (in Arabic) is a state of ecstasy and surrender one enters while listening, with body and soul, to music."
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word barzakh
""The Bride of the Book," a sūra that used to intrigue me because of its mysterious double sonority, its indefinitely repeated doubling, all in the name of the twofold, sun, star, moon, Orient, Occident, tree, seed, scale, weight: two of each kind, two seas divided by that which separates, barzakh, isthmus, two lands, twice Eden and two others beyond, two springs, ruby and pearl: and to coral I wanted to add carnelian."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 107 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word iwan
"See the towering height of the Sultan Hassan mosque: there, the walls soar higher than cathedrals, shrinking the view of the sky captured by the confines of its courtyard, as defined by its four iwān: patch of blue so moving, unleashing the sobs so avidly yearned for, liberating the body."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 104 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word natron
"But what a mistake to have assembled limbs from fresh corpses to marinate in formaldehyde; you should have let them all macerate in a natron solution."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 92 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bottarga
"Have some bottarga, it's good for you, makes you strong."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 92 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word boukha
"Chickpeas, cumin, fava beans, artichokes, fennel, boukha: have something to eat, here's a drink, you're all welcome."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 92 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word boukha
Wikipedia says it's a Tunisian spirit made from figs.
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word argan
"Could it be they've all left, slyly under cover of night, one of those mass departures encouraged by Zionist propaganda, emptying Tiznit or so many other Berber Ksours, such as Ifran in the Lesser Atlas Mountains, scree and tattoo on the rock face, heat like a furnace as we pass through the scattered argan trees, relatively dense prelude to the desert."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 91 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word nutgall
"Into the leather-crafts souk, fragrance of hides tanned with sumac and nutgall, shadow striated with light, green the dominant color, metonymy of the city."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 86 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word noria
"Politically shrewd, pleasure-seeking, a great friend to the hāra, he speaks the language of all-night revelry, respects Jewish customs and holidays, learned their poetry, recites Genesis in Aramaic, has uncovered the secrets of cabalistic interpretation, settles disputes regarding peripateticism of the Toledano and Hispanically Judeo-Arab sort, contests Avicenna's theory of emanation, combines discursive reason with the solemnity of the vagina, delights in elliptical and allusive language, lover of several Arab and Jewish entertainers, old-fashioned in taste and dress, a word lover, heartbreaker, keeper of the night, nocturnal wing, lunar matrix of riddles, noria cascading water: creaking waterwheel, wood imbibed, whispering trickle, jasmine and sweet summer, hatred of the occupier and what came before, neither is of us by body, by will: mockery of the cops and other prospective betrayers who, once they've agreed to kill, nonetheless seek to save face."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 84-85 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word rebab
"The musicians, players of rebab, utar, and ney, endeavor to hammer out tunes in her praise."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 82 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word ney
Wikipedia says it's an "end-blown flute."
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shott
"Ariana: settlement of Jews and Andalusian refugees cohabiting, light of white and blue, tidy streets, town squares like little stage sets, harlequin or Punch and Judy, graveyard poignantly earthbound, salt plain culminating in a shott, then sand and sea."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 80-81 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hypostyle
"Everyone's at it, playing and parleying, circles within circles, sacred arcaded courtyard revived, hypostyle hall left to the more resourceful among them to revitalize prayer and ritual, the ten-arched loggia open to the street, where over here shkubba players keep an eye on cheaters, over there aces take all, somewhere the sound of dice and dominos, elsewhere a game of chess between two refined elderly gentlemen, pederasts surrounded by handsome boys making faces and gesticulating, sticking out tongues at any eye that lingers too long."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 78 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word cenacle
"Living words of experience, officialdom laid bare, toothless mouths accustomed to chewing furtive speech in rage at a ghetto of words with its rules and laws, at the foundation of a cenacle in need of a Judas."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 75 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word oukala
"The terrified dignitaries find no safety even when locked in their fortress houses, those not already abandoned and squatted in by legions of the rural poor who break in and settle by force in those now degraded monuments to another time, former palaces become oukalas, palatial slums."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 73-74 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word oukala
http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=3951 says: "Oukala designates an in-town caravanserai, a type of hotel with rooms rented on a daily or weekly basis. Since the 1930s, the old city of Tunis, the Médina was strongly affected by a population shift; the intense rural migration and the departure of its urban gentry. Many private residences and monuments of the old city were "oukalaised", i.e., turned into multi-family dwellings that sometimes sheltered up to twenty households, often the less fortunate ones, in unacceptable sanitary conditions."
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word dhikr
"What is this plan of yours, O carefree children born yesterday?—calm down, lest you share in the flames of hell, warns a slave to the dhikr, sanctimoniously reciting the names of Allah and turning in circles since the dawn of the century."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 72 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word lentisk
"Immobile, I have journeyed through lands and encountered saints, archive of the world, from Tafilalet to Senoussi country, their white domes dazzling hilltop and desert; sacred lentisks, holy ash tree, blessed waters, healing springs, benediction and grace upon your relentless desire to be."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 69 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word siwak
"Cleansed of what she had interiorized as an inevitable defilement, an odor that she preferred not to name, her periodic chastity; bad, black blood, she would say, yet not so bad for less delicate nostrils, curve of the waist embellished, complexion deep brown, eyes lined in kohl, thick hair, wavy, shining, black; teeth white pearls, gums like rubies or coral, rubbed with siwak, Capparis sodata, fragrance and sap of chewed bark."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 48 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mausim
"Different vision of bodies for sale, the Middle Atlas Mountains, desert's edge, mausim, harvest festival time, ritual prostitution at rural shrines, Moulay Ibrahim and elsewhere, outside the city, beyond the constraints of urbanity, theology, business, and all the various trades that organize the history of a city like Fez that extends its influence well beyond its borders, tending to centralize and cancel out all difference, incorporating the well-to-do of other towns and regions, Souss, Tafraout, Tetouan, Taroudant, even the intractable Marrakech, into a common and coherent project facilitating the exploitation of all bodies; ensuring, thanks to the new port inherited from the former colonizers, an open-door policy, and with the blessings of the royal Cherifian family, quashing any demonstration of local power unless this be tiny and fetishistic, confining its deviance to the mountainous backcountry."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 47-48 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pareu
"The display of practically naked bodies, hips wrapped in skimpy pareus, reproduces the rhetoric of the Tunis brothel."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 47 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kamanjah
"Drag queen color and light, shake that thing, dime-store exotic, sailors in a port of call, gobbling down leftover couscous chilled by the pathetic eyes of a fiddler playing with neither melancholy nor hysteria, sawing away at his kamanjah, held in upright position on one knee: Tangiers, rival of continents, from its perch obsessed by two seas, tumbling seasons scatter into color-splashed crowds, throngs, dense in places: waning lives or former glories ravaged, shouldering the insignificance of what had been their worldly past, walking Pekingese on a leash, silk kimono revealing wrinkled, once-legendary thighs."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 44-45 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word ambo
"Writing mixes up the seasons, resolving the usual jumble of hot and cold, summer or winter: it reflects the messiness of the body more than any primordial law: it is chaos more than fiat, a battle of giants meant to obstruct the desire to invent oneself according to some divine order: it is with us, a descent, subterranean, underworld, regression, a groping toward totality: it is the gallery that cuts through the edifice end to end, the ambo breaking up the uniformity of narrative space."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 43 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word dulia
"I won't say that what appears here are the words of a drunk. No, it's a dead man breathing life into his dulia, fragility that entangles the body and keeps it from any attempt to gather up all the inaccessible desire that blows away so jauntily on the breeze."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 41 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word manducation
"As for the body, which our erudite voyeur pretends to ignore, it helps dig the ditch that will unearth the compromising roots of his clerical genealogy, the scholarly and social core of a family theology that realizes its golden age is now over, impervious to healthy criticism, manducation of the immutable precepts lying virtually undisturbed these past decades by those discreet stirrings that the surrounding vacuum causes to resonate until they finally swell into an event of sorts, a slender flame commensurate with our respectfully narrow national history."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 32 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word zebiba
"Fragrance of sardine and harissa escape the grocer's shop, run by a Jerbi, stained gray smock, full moon face, zebiba on his forehead, mark of the pious who bow in prayer, greed, and acquisition of wealth, honing their instinctive sense of deprivation."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 31 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word minbar
"And what of the analogy between sex and tree, the palm whose fermented nectar, a mere drop on the tongue, transports us to the bed of Eros, ardor impatient to flee the Saharan heat by immersion in the sweat and wax of this henna-tinted, finely tattooed body—a minbar on a hip, the Ka'aba on a thigh, winglets on her shaved pubis—bodies swelling together until the eye of the needle is opened and threaded, freeing you, putting you beyond limits: musk, floral essence, mingling of honeys?"
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 15 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 16, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word assegai
"Here-elsewhere: with deadly violence, a mixture of countries traveled, pieces of a life torn to shreds, a body scraped off the ground, appearance peculiar and untidy, blood stains; sweat, strife, toil: incursion of rebel assegais where the mountain rises up in fortification."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 6 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
September 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word clinamen
"At first it was a discrete clinamen, a slight deviation in the orderly descent of textual atoms—a not absent in one place and slipped in somewhere else."
Upstaged by Jacques Jouet, translated by Leland de la Durantaye, p 28
September 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hapax
"To watch an actor in profile is a special pleasure for the connoisseur, all the more so when that actor is unknown, unexpected—and perhaps acting for the first and last time. Such an actor is, as Flavy would later remark, a hapax of the stage."
Upstaged by Jacques Jouet, translated by Leland de la Durantaye, p 18
September 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word phlogistic
"The headmaster turned to look again upon that which he could hardly abide: his life's work disintegrating in flames, with scant hope of phlogistic phoenix rising from its ashes."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 459
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pursy
""And infirmity in your pursy lungs, my good friend. Reconsider.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 413
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word altricial
"They are quite the opposite, their altricial nature demanding that they be nursed and nurtured for a time, or else they should die in the crib and the experiment come to naught."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 370
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word orographically
""But a rather odd sort of Arcadia, orographically speaking, for the valley that would come to be known as Dingley Dell lies within what is known as the Allegheny Front—the dividing line between the eastern edge of the Allegheny Plateau escarpment…"
"…and the lower Allegheny Mountains," broke in Mr. Graham, excitedly."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 369
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word weazen
"Artisans and tradesmen of the working class used Westminster when necessary to ply their trade within the weazen, dilapidated neighbourhood that now included Scadger's new domicile, and now and then lowly men in Scadger's impoverished league were driven by necessity to venture in the opposite direction to bear the sort of cold reception that had come to Scadger in Skettles' apothecary shop."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 332
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word atrabilious
""These conditions are appalling," said Sir Dabber with an atrabilious shake of the head."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 306
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word stramonium
"We've tried large doses of every remedy that can be compounded: bromide of potassium, belladonna, chloride of aluminum, ferrous sulfate, quinine, tartar of arsenic, stramonium tobacco."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 300
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word venatic
"In his youth he had wrestled upon a mat in the manner of the Greeks and had downed the largest buck in the eastern wood as was ever felled by bow and arrow—that record holding itself in perpetuity given the fact that hunting in both woods was now prohibited (though the law was broken now and again, almost exclusively by members of the congenitally-venatic Scadger clan)."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 278
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word camlet
"As the family drew nearer that point which offered our best vantage, I saw that Muntle had identified the brother correctly; there was Harry and there was his wife Matilda, each drest in cast-off and multiply-mended clothing, the husband in an old worn and faded blue camlet coat that did not befit the warm season, dragging a large gunnysack, which, no doubt, contained most of his family's paltry possessions."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 250
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word caliginous
"Then he turned to begin his own caliginous descent down the forest path that pointed to the Outland and to all of its wondrous wonders."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 186
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word batrachian
""You idiot. Snakes don't cough."
"How do you know? You're not an ophiologist. You're a batrachianist.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 167
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word elapid
""Clive—the junior Clive and not the senior Clive who is presently chopping his way through the Amazon jungle—fears that I will go and tangle myself up with that fugitive elapid. They think I'm daft sometimes, these Pellers. Now I ask you, young man: if I were so precipitant as to go draping myself with poisonous fugitive elapids, would I have survived even half of my ninety-four years? Dear me. Now you are but a boy. Do you know what the word 'precipitant' means?""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 153
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bryophitic
From Merriam-Webster, a bryophite is "any of a division (Bryophyta) of nonflowering plants comprising the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts."
"Newman vowed to shorten his three-day journey by a full day—that is, if the weather remained clement and if his Dinglian shoes continued to hold themselves securely upon his feet and if he was not stopped along the way by any of those who wished to do him harm, and if—finally—he could navigate his way through the woods, where the sun did not shine, and trust the moss that generally grew on the northern side of the trees to act as his bryophitic compass."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, pp 129-130
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gallipot
"Alas, my sister-in-law had received in exchange for her maternal overture to the sulky and stone-faced thirteen-year-old a harsh rebuff, delivered in the girl's wonted insolent fashion: "Sit for several days betwixt you and your damask-nosed crony Miss Snigsworth? Watch the two of you tossing off your gallipots of grog as if it were some ancient nepenthe? Pardon me if I decline the invitation this week or any other week, Mama, but I would rather have sharp iron nails driven into my skull.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, 117
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word rinceau
"Nor did he—the grandson, on his mother's side, of a top-sawyer artisan of the Folkstone Furniture Works—behold a palmette upon the headboard, or a rinceau carving gracing the footboard."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 83
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bumper
I didn't know the "drinking glass filled to the brim" sense of it 'til now.
""Don't tell me you haven't had orange juice before."
"Only a couple of times. It's very expensive. It comes from the orangery and one drinks it only on very special occasions. I had a glass on my eleventh birthday. Can I have more? Can you bumper it?"
"Bumper it?" asked Evelyn, the mother, as she poured.
"Yes. Fill it to the brim.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 89
September 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bashaw
"I was most curious to know why the woman had not been better treated—she, the wife of a member of the Petit-Parliament, a Bashaw!"
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 34
September 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word squab
I knew about the bird but not about the cushions. As in:
"Mrs. Potterson nodded. "I had no idea that the Pyegraves were in such want of money. Why, he's the most prosperous draper and upholsterer in the Dell. Every squab upon which you sit was stuffed and sewn in his shop.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 32
September 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mangold
"But who should not believe Dingley Dell to be the most beautiful vale in all the world (if one were to stand with the scarred and scabbed Southern Coal Ridge to one's back), with its fields of rye and oats and corn and mangold set in eye-pleasing checkerboard upon the agricultural northland, and plump rolling downs emeralding the valley's southern reach."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 26
September 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word wisent
"As I crept along through the gloom, past engravings of wisent and aurochs and woolly rhinos, it occurred to me that I really had no clue what would drive someone to wriggle through a pitch-black tunnel to cover the walls with images that only another, similarly driven soul would see."
"Sleeping with the Enemy" by Elizabeth Kolbert, p 75 of the August 15th & 22nd, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
August 31, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word charango
"Among his charges: two bookcases filled with real and fake books; twelve banquet chairs; three candelabra; a mesh of branches that entangles Touchstone; a wicker horse; a fake deer carcass; a stuffed boar; red grape juice that doubles as wine; three tins of lychee nuts, for Gloucester's eyeballs; a bicycle and an iPod for Romeo (some liberties are taken with time period); twelve bike pumps; six Maglites; a wheelbarrow; a throne; eight skull masks; a bouquet of fake roses; a wreath with removable plastic flowers; three black parasols; a pipe for Juliet's nurse; a box of Lion chocolate bars ("We bought them in England, 'cause we weren't sure if we could get them out here," Wimperis said); a glass ashtray lined with K-Y Jelly ("If it gets knocked over, it's better than using water"); walkie-talkies; forty litres of stage blood ("It's quite sugary—like what you use to make candy floss"); a gold-on-black invitation to the Capulets' party; a metal claw with a protruding blade (for Tybalt); four short javelins and five tall ones; three fake crossbows; approximately a hundred swords and daggers (most swords are custom-made to suit the height and weight of a particular actor, and the dents from jousting are filed down between shows); ten rifles with bayonets, for the French Army in "King Lear"; ten without bayonets, for the British; the bloodied head of Decius Brutus; a box of love poems, which drop from the ceiling in "As You Like It" ("They've all been fireproofed"); one Enfield revolver; three Webley revolvers; three AK-56 assault rifles ("These are mine. I'm joking!"); four bags of plastic snow; a brace of fake pheasants; raisins for Audrey; a charango …"
- "Checklist" by Michael Schulman, p 20 of the August 8, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
August 30, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word rorter
""Everybody who was there knows that. But to all the other people in the world, I'm just the Cockney Queen, a bleeding rorter...""
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 281 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word rorter
the free dictionary/a> says: "a small-scale confidence trickster"
August 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word lovat
"He looked pale and battered. There was a rug over his knees. But his straw-colored hair was neatly plastered down, his high "masher" collar was immaculate, and his three-buttoned jacket in dark lovat was the very glass of fashion."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 274 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word papaverine
"The doctor turned to the nurse. "Nurse, please go and bring me some tincture of valerian from the pharmacy. And some papaverine syrup.""
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 272 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pernicated
"Finally she lost her temper, and threw an inkwell, shrieking in a way that didn't need translating even if Becky had known the German for "pernicated procrastinators" and "gotch-gutted Goths.""
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 130 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pernicated
A dictionary of slang and colloquial English:
abridged from the seven-volume work, entitled: Slang and its analogues
says: "swaggering, full of side" (see Google Books)August 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word poodlefaker
"Damn fool, he thought. You walked right into it, you clown. Because now he'd have even less freedom than before: Gödel would pin him down in some poodle-faking routine when he ought to be out hunting this Spanish mummer—if she really did exist, and if it really was her."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 81 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word etiquettical
"The Channel was boisterous, but seasickness is not a fit subject for discussion; any book on etiquette will tell you that. And etiquette was at the front of Becky's mind as soon as they reached dry land, for once they were on the train, the countess began to teach her and Adelaide a thousand things they'd never dreamed of: how to address the chancellor, the precise difference in rank between the younger son of a count and the elder son of a baron, how to peel an orange at table, the right sort of conversational opening to make to a bishop—every conceivable kind of etiquettical topic, until their heads rang."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 51 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word toper
"Hals's relentless jolliness isn't confined to his genre scenes of rollicking topers, such as "Young Man and Woman in an Inn" (1623). The euphoric hero hoists a glass while being attended with fawning approval by a prostitute, a dog, and an innkeeper—three parties, according to a Dutch adage of the time, whose affections come at a cost."
"Haarlem Shuffle" by Peter Schjeldahl, in the August 8, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, pg 75
August 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word cantrip
"Julia had logged another couple of telephone-pole paint blobs, one of which she'd stopped and studied quite closely using some kind of visual cantrip that he hadn't caught because she hadn't wanted him to catch it—she actually hid it with one hand as she cast it with the other."
The Magician King by Lev Grossman, p 128
August 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word vergescu
"They should have been facing down bellowed challenges from black knights bearing the vergescu, or solving thorny theological dilemmas posed by holy hermits."
The Magician King by Lev Grossman, p 101
August 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word vergescu
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/thwhite.htm says this is from T.H. White and is "the white shield carried by unfledged knights."
August 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word taffrail
"Quentin walked to the very stern and looked out over the wake, swept clean and crushed into foam by the weight of their passage. He felt good and right here. He patted the Muntjac's worn old taffrail: unlike most things and most people in Fillory, the Muntjac needed Quentin, and Quentin hadn't let her down."
The Magician King by Lev Grossman, p 53
August 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word arrah
"Con gaped. And then he blushed. It was a new sensation; the others couldn't see it in the rain and the murky lamplight, but he felt it most acutely.
"Arrah," he moaned. "Man, I beg yer pardon. If I'd known ye was Jewish I'd ... I'd...I'd bloody fight for them.""
The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman, p 345 of the Dell/Laurel-Leaf paperback
August 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word crimp
I didn't know the "A person who tricks or coerces others into service as sailors or soldiers" definition of this word, but that's how Philip Pullman uses it, here, though he's using it more generally as "a person who tricks or coerces others":
""Where are the crimps working from?" said Goldberg.
"Off the Pier Head, sir. St. Katharine's Basin. See, there's sixty, maybe seventy people to come ashore, maybe more. They offload 'em at the Pier Head, then they can get away straight up Little Thames Street. You seen all them cabs? The cabmen got wind of this trade in the last month or so. They put a copper there regular now, to control 'em. There was nearly a hundred there last week."
He pushed off, then slipped the oars into the oarlocks and started to pull away with short, light strokes.
"What are crimps?" said Sally.
"Parasites," said Goldbergs. "Swindlers. Minor criminals. Those vultures you saw back there.""
The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman, p 237 of the Dell/Laurel-Leaf paperback
August 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word whisticaster
"For answer she went and kissed him.
"Well, that's better than a whisticaster in the rattlers," he said.
"A what?"
"A smack in the gob. Good idea, then, is it?"
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 206 of the Knopf paperback edition
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word whisticaster
http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/whisticaster-tf/ says:
"A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
whisticaster
. A further var. of prec"
- which I think must refer to the previous term in the dictionary, which is "whister-clister." Of this, http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/whister-clister-tf/ says:
"whister-clister
, -snefet, -snivet. A cuff on the ear or the side of the head: resp. late C.18–mid-19 (Grose, 1st ed.), then dial.; C.16 (Udall); C.16 (Palsgrave: OED). Perhaps a reduplication of whister, that which ‘whists’ or puts to silence; even so, -clister may pun clyster, an enema, while -snefet, -snivet may be cognate with the vv.
snite snivel. Perhaps orig. dial., as the Palsgrave locus indicates; certainly dial. are the variants whisterpoop (C.17–20), whistersniff (C.19–20), and whister-twister—which last (C.18–19) is certainly a punning reduplication. See also wisty-castor."
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word goffered
"There were dresses; there were nightgowns; there were precious christening robes made of lawn, which needed the finest and most delicate stitching to repair them; there were items she was making for sale to her regular customers—pretty lace gloves, shawls, fine handkerchiefs, embroidered blouses, goffered widow's caps, filmy muslin petticoats. Everything she owned was hauled out from its tissue paper wrappings and ripped to shreds."
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 147 of the Knopf paperback edition
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word fussock
""Drunken fussock," observed the child.
"You want to mind your manners," said Jim. "Speaking of your elders and betters like that.""
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 117 of the Knopf paperback
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word murerk
"Look, carrot-face, get the murerk, else I'll fetch you a sockdolager what'll lay you out till Christmas," he said."
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 116 of the Knopf paperback
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word murerk
http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/murerk-1-tf/ says:
"The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang
murerk
*. The mistress of the house: tramps’ c.: from ca 1855. ?burerk (BURICK) perverted."
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word armillary
"They had a way of looking all around them, but not in the same time at the same direction, that reminded Brentford of a clockwork armillary sphere and that made him feel dizzy and ill at east just as when they talked very quickly to each other in some language no one understood."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 399
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hebdomad
"The Councillors, not knowing what to do, kept their hands up or stuck in mid-motion. She approached their dazed hebdomad and their startled servants, stiffening her backbone, cocking the hammers of her eyes."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 387
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word morion
"Brentford and the Scavengers passed through the gate to find the gigantic Varangian Guards silently lined up in a row, their barbed halberds pointed at the intruders, and quite impressive in their shining armour plates and morion helms."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 383
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word sastruga
"On this second day, the going was getting somehow smoother, with less steering around and more sastruga snow."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 262
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word aleuronate
"In the rear, a hatch in the floor led down to the hold, and flashlight in hand, Brentford checked once again that everything he needed, or hoped not to need, was there as he had ordered: pellets of Cornwallis zinc to recharge the motor fuel cells; one month's supply of "Vril-food," dried soups, pemmican cakes, cod roe, whey powder, aleuronate bread, bars of his favourite chocolate, lime juice, and coffee; a small sled and harness; a primus stove; a pharmacy; a 16-bore Paradox rifle with boxes of shotgun shells and cartridges; a caribou-fur sleeping bag; spare warm clothes; oil-cloth tarpaulins; ice-axes and guncotton powder; a toolbox with everything necessary to build and live in a snow house or an improvised cave; a captive oil-silk balloon that the could send up to project light signals on—everything that could come in useful to prolong his life or his agony."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 257
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word écorché
"A steady diet of opiate pills, Freezeland Fags, Wormwood Star Absinthe, bad coffee, and almost no food had turned his body into a thin, taut, anatomical écorché, with no muscles and all the nerves showing, the whole offering little or no protection against the outer world."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 223
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shebeen
"Gabriel knew the story from his father, from the time when he had been Portcullis Pursuivant of the City's Civil Registry Records at the House of Honours and Heraldry. It was a story that his father liked to tell a little bit too often and it was he who had started spreading the rumour around various bars and shebeens until he had been deemed a nuisance and "put on ice.""
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 180
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pluderhosen
"Behind those statues were mirrored doors that led to the various parts of the building. The Council Cabinet's was opposite the entrance archway, and this was where Brentford was introduced by one of the gigantic Varangian guards of the Council of Seven's Security Company, who wore the usual uniform of figure-eight ruff, black doublet and black and white striped pluderhosen and held a halberd in his enormous hand."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 160
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pluderhosen
Wikipedia says: "Pluderhosen, a Northern European form of pansied slops with a very full inner layer pulled out between the panes and hanging below the knee" - and further says that pansied slopes are "round hose characterized by the addition of a layer of panes, or strips of fabric running from the waistband to the leg band. These are commonly referred to as "pumpkin" pants." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluderhosen)
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pandiculate
"Wynne fetched his greatcoat and hat without a word, while DeBrutus pandiculated on the sofa, trying to look unconcerned."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 147
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word obsidional
"To the obsessively obsidional Gabriel, this was his Troy, where he would defend himself to the last. His books, lined up with a compact precision, were the battlement from which he would shoot the poisoned arrows of his wit."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 144
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word remanence
"The highbrow or hurried reader will be content with knowing that her "As White As..." was said to have caught the very marrow of the icy city. But that is of little use to really measure the remanence of her name to the olde-New."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 103
July 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word specksioneer
"He entered the pub, noted for its remarkable painting of a rather muddy and dark whale-hunting scene, asked for a Scoresby Stout and a Specksioneer Sandwich, and went to the Pneumatic Post Booth."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, pp 77-78
July 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word williwaw
""How much I regret it, that I am not reputed to perform random acts of kindness," answered Gabriel, as coldly as he could, which was not much, for a natural distaste for all kinds of authority quickly gave him the williwas in such circumstances."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 30
July 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kamik
"Though the weather was rather chilly and wet, soldiers in fur-lined trapper hats, mittens, and kamiks were loitering in front of the barracks, playing curling or some rather clumsy soccer, with an air of relaxed resignation to the well-known drabness of the soldiering life."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 23
July 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word septentrional
The epigraph to Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat is a quote from "The True Levellers Standard Advanced," attributed differently (I imagine to fit into the world of the book). So, the epigraph and its in-book attribution:
"It was shewed us by Vision in Dreams, and out of Dreams, That that should be the Place we should begin upon; And though that Earth in view of Flesh, be very barren, yet we should trust the Spirit for a blessing.
A Blast on the Barren Land, or the Standard of True Community Advanc'd, Presented to the Sons of Adam by Henry Hotspur, Being a Platform to Plant the Waste Land Of the Northern Isles & Septentrional Parts, & to Restore the Regiment of Commonwealth, Printed in the Yeer 1649"
July 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word Brandenburg
"He was wearing royal blue breeches of watered silk, a damask waistcoat of white and gold, and a quilted velvet smoking jacket ornamented with brandenbourgs."
Heartless by Gail Carriger, p 137
July 17, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word clinker
"Then she opened the door of the cold and silent furnace and stuck her hand inside. 'Eureka!' she shouted, with a loud, metallic echo, for there at the bottom of the furnace, with a sparse scattering of ashes and one forgotten clinker, lay the clue!"
Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright, p 195 of the 2008 paperback
July 15, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gilt
The "young female pig" definition was new to me, too. I just came across it:
"All the cattle brought handsome sums, and then it was the pigs' turn. One by one they were displayed: the gilts, the shoats, the cranky old sow and her litter of half-grown piglets."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, pp 239-240 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shoat
"Also there were sundry inquiries from private persons, such as the Delacey brothers, Cedric and Fitzroy, who wished to know the plans for the Meeker dogs and a certain Hampshire shoat among the livestock."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, p 202 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word boneset
"The dragonflies hung above the still surface like turquoise needles and woodpeckers knocked at the dead willow branches up above. The opposite bank was a rich jungle of jewelweed and boneset."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, pp 112-113 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word trudgeon
"Dave Addison turned out to be a star swimmer. He could do a jackknife without forgetting to unfold in time, and a swan dive without forgetting to point his toes. He could do the crawl, the trudgeon, the butterfly breast stroke, and stay underwater longer than any of them."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, p 49 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word melodeon
"The living room was full of things: tables, and lots of chairs, all with crocheted antimacassars; pictures and pennants and fans on the wall; a big melodeon at one end of the room with very old sheet music on it; and in the wide doorway there were portieres all made of beads which rattled like rain on a tin roof when Mrs. Wheelwright brushed against them."
The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, p 56 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word calceolaria
"The Wheelwrights' house was very interesting, though rather dim because all the windows were smothered under a profusion of potted plants. There were red geraniums, and fuchsias whose blossoms hung from their stems like costly earrings, and great overgrown begonias, and calceolarias all covered with little speckled calico pocketbooks."
The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, p 54 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pongee
"Mrs. Oliphant was very glad to see them. She wore a suit made out of pongee, a hat with a green veil, an amethyst necklace, a lapis lazuli necklace, and a silver one with her eyeglasses on it."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, pp 165-166 of the 2008 paperback edition
July 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word caddis
"Dark-green water in lakes like this, and salt water with big waves and a fishy smell; and water coming loud over a dam, and water in brooks all full of caddis houses and green moss. And water in swamps with cat-tails growing out of it. And yellow mud-puddle water that you can wade in, with the mud as soft as butter between your toes."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, p 129 of the 2008 paperback edition
July 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word coati-mundi
"Her name was Miss Buff-Towers and she was related in some way to an earl, a fact she was very proud of and never forgot. She had long front teeth, the color of old piano keys, and a huge coiled arrangement of braided hair on top of her head like an orderly eagle's nest. She was a kindhearted creature but she knew as much about raising children as I know about raising coati-mundis. (I'm not even sure what they are."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, pp 35-36 of the 2008 paperback edition
July 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mycelia
"Mii knows the intricate mycelia of relations and events that are expressed in the gestures of the statues, surge into the points of daggers held over the breasts of enemies and the tips of fingers reaching out for conciliation; she knows the thousands of images and stories of the world of statues that have never achieved expression yet pulsate in stiff gestures of the body."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 245 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 16, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word haruspicy
"When at twenty-three the dazzlingly beautiful wife of the king is appointed president of the Devel Academy, an assembly of venerable old men who have dedicated their lives to science, jokes are cracked on all the islands of the archipelago. But the jesters are in error—Uddo has an extensive knowledge of chemistry, transformation in metals, runes, augury, archaeology, metaphysics, geometry, architecture, statics, boat-building and building of labyrinths, demonology, astronomy and haruspicy."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 198 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 14, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word brawn
"The islanders would often ask me about the food where I came from, so once I used several cuttlefish mushrooms to fashion for them the fare on the table of a Czech pub, with plates of goulash and dumplings, a smaller plate with brawn, a basket of bread rolls, several half-litres of beer and glasses of rum, adding while I was at it, an open pack of cigarettes and an ashtray with cigarette ends in it."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 141 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word jaspe
"I played on boards whose squares changed in the course of a single game. They were made of squares of darker and lighter sand sprinkled on the board. In the course of the game the wind would blow the sand about, into long patches run through with different colours, until the board became a whirl of darker and lighter twists, reminiscent of the jaspé bindings of books come to life in dreams; and the pieces would pick their way through them, before crumbling and blending in with the sand of the squares."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 128 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word homothetic
""You're right," the girl conceded. "You should just know that the right triangle ABC plays an important role in all of this and that Leibniz realized that if we reduce the horizontal base of this triangle, correspondingly we reduce the second cathetus so that the triangle will always remain homothetic; the relation of the two catheti maintains a constant value which is a characteristic of the curve of the line at point I."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, pp 112-113 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word sagitta
""It's simple, I'll show you," said the thief, taking off her black glove and drawing a quadrant in the snow with her index finger. But as she stretched to describe its base and sagitta, the y beneath her gave a fearful crack and in terror she grabbed Baumgarten by his dressing gown. He suggested she leave off the explanations: for the listener's understanding of the story of the wrecked boat a knowledge of infinitesimal calculus was probably not altogether necessary."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 112 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word catheti
"At point I, in the upper part of the quadrant, a tangent was made, and this—at points A and B—sprouted two metal abscissae, one parallel to line x and the other to line y. They intersected at point C inside the quadrant, thus giving the catheti of a right triangle whose hypotenuse was the segment AB in the tangent."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 112 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word speos
"But the majority of the photos there on the desk were of the inside of the cave, its gloomy recesses lit harshly by an electric flash. Evidently the cave had many years earlier been transformed into a speos."
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 106 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word saltire
"Leaning against the wall to the right of this were two dark beams, crossed, beaten together at their centres to look like a great "X"; he imagined these forming part of a framework used in the cutting of wood. Resting against this rotten saltire were the remnants of a dilapidated door, upon which were quivering the flakes of a cream-coloured varnish with which the door must once have been painted; the door's centre panel still bore a brass handle."
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 75 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word calutron
"One American defense consultant told me that as yet there is "no smoking calutron," although, like many Western government officials, he is convinced that Iran is intent on becoming a nuclear state sometime in the future."
-"Iran and the Bomb" by Seymour M. Hersh, in the June 6, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 30
June 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word paramorph
"And those babes, dressed in your old cobweb clothes
—mercury, King's Lynn silk, fey dappled moon—
not changelings, those, but your dear dread own,
paramorph whose name seesaws."
-from "Oblique Strategies" by Cynthia Zarin, in The Ada Poems, p 50
June 5, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word reticulate
"My right hand saves what my left burns
as if what's left—that black cloud, those few
reticulate, neglected trees—could be kept
where everything but what you want is free."
-from "Spring Thaw" by Cynthia Zarin, in The Ada Poems, p 19
June 5, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word cynosure
"No longer able to think or write or breathe—
New York a cynosure of drink and guilt,"
"Christmas I" by Cynthia Zarin in The Ada Poems, p 7
June 5, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tomalley
"Chilled half-lobster, with an unsightly smear of tomalley vinaigrette, gets by on its winning personality (it's well steamed and satisfying, and it's lobster, after all."
- Shauna Lyon, "Tables for Two: The John Dory Oyster Bar" in the May 30, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 18
May 30, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word sinamay
"These objects—darkly stained wood-and-aluminium structures with additional elements of fabric, leather, and sinamay (a stiff cloth often used in millinery)—are domestically scaled, their simple armatures recalling ambiguous sections of furniture."
- From a review of a Claire Barclay show in Art in America, December 2010, review by Lee Triming, p 158
May 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gink
"From what Sinkler had seen, the man worked as hard as the road crews and had about as much to show for it. Twenty years older and too much of a gink to realize what Lucy understood at eighteen."
"The Trusty" by Ron Rash in the May 23, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 73
May 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word puncheon
"Sinkler stepped closer to the entrance and saw two ladder-back chairs and a small table set on a puncheon floor."
"The Trusty" by Ron Rash in the May 23, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 69
May 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word davit
"He peered into the mirror, improving himself, unaware of me as he worked in the half-shadow of the lifeboat which hung from the davit."
"The Cat's Table" by Michael Ondaatje, in the May 16, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, p 111
May 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word weasand
Ah, weasand. I'd forgotten about this word but came across it again today: "The gullet was separated and the weasand was drawn from the windpipe. They cleared the chest of its entrails."
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds, p 49 of the Penguin paperback
May 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word speleological
"In the beginning I used to get postcards. At first they were warm and even jovial: Everything is fine. I'm thinking of joining the Chilean Speleological Society but don't worry, it won't interfere with my poetry, if anything the two pursuits are complementary."
Great House by Nicole Krauss, p 13
April 27, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word howay
"The plumber pitied me so much I had to press money on him, I tell W. He didn't want to take it. He'd never seen anything like it, he said, standing, looking up at the ceiling. He seemed hypnotised. He wouldn't leave, but just stood there, looking. And even when he went out the front door, he was still shaking his head. —'Howay, it's terrible, man'."
Spurious by Lars Iyer, 84
April 16, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word aorist
"But W.'s studies of ancient Greek are not progressing well, he says. It's the aorist, it defeats him every time. W.'s bumping his head against the ceiling of his intelligence, he says. I often have that feeling, I tell him. —'No, you're just lazy', W. says."
Spurious by Lars Iyer, p 34
April 15, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word curandero
"There is the old village itself and its vestigial claims to "authenticity"; the church (relatively new as southwestern churches go, having replaced an older one in 1884); the 18-year-old upscale development to the west for contrast (and for an architectural tour of another nature; it's a good survey of imagined "Santa Fe style"); the movie set in the distance the curandero's "office" with its skull on a pole; what used to be here and there (scattered adobe ruins); the quite new community center and the brand new firehouse (partially built by community work parties); yard art; an extensive petroglyph site; the cloud shows and encompassing light on ranchlands and mountains; the (diminishing) biological diversity of the creek and bosque; the mouth-watering tamales at the Tienda Anaya; and, of course, the people."
On the Beaten Path by Lucy Lippard, pp 12-13
April 10, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word prothonotary
See citation on pileated
March 31, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pileated
"The pileated drummer's wawk—it was unignorable
that that was my song, the drummer's low wawk wawk wawk, it was unignorable,
and not the sweet sweet sweet prothonotary's warble."
"Blues Haiku" by John Shoptaw in The New Yorker, March 28, 2011, p 88
March 31, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word asyndeton
"By analyzing this "modern art of everyday expression" as it appears in accounts of spatial practices, J.-F. Augoyard discerns in it two especially fundamental stylistic figures: synecdoche and asyndeton."
The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau, p 101
March 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word deontic
"They include the kinds of relationship this enunciation entertains with particular paths (or "statements") by according them a truth value ("alethic" modalities of the necessary, the impossible, the possible, or the contingent), an epistemological value ("epistemic" modalities of the certain, the excluded, the plausible, or the questionable) or finally an ethical or legal value ("deontic" modalities of the obligatory, the forbidden, the permitted, or the optional)."
The practice of everyday life by Michel de Certeau, p 99
March 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shako
"The child was enrolled in the military academy. He received a little sword, long trousers, and a shako."
Embers by Sándor Márai, translated by Carol Brown Janeway, p 32 of the Vintage International paperback
March 14, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shtreimel
"The Jews who stand between the sky and the city's roofs stop the rain, and when it's very cold, at Christmas, the snow falls on their shtreimels and caftans."
Curriculum Vitae by Yoel Hoffmann, translated by Peter Cole, 86
March 8, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word milo
"Late summers, early autumns, you can see something that binds
the map of this country together: the girasol, orange gold-
petalled
with her black eye, laces the roadsides from Vermont to
California
runs the edges of orchards, chain-link fences
milo fields and malls, schoolyards and reservations"
"An Atlas of the Difficult World, IV" by Adrienne Rich, in An Atlas of the Difficult World, p 11
March 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word cordwainer
"Now was Rusty a childish Binelli-issued nickname for his redheaded sister, or was it a reference to the scavenged nail that poked one or the other young cordwainer in the big toe and began a period of infectious infirmary that would lead to the necessity of finding a crafty activity to fill the long hours of bedridden days, an activity of which the children failed to tire, though strength returned; no by god, they never tired of this, the smell of leather, the meticulous stitching, the shodding of the people, the heady glamour, the creative juices stirring within pent-up loins, loins that hungered for the tickle of a stray red wisp tossed carelessly past a hollowed cheek—well, it is all conjecture and as such not for this report to contemplate. Shoes were made, many shoes."
Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles by Kira Henehan, p 48
February 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word spigarello
"Kohlrabi, spigarello, and an ever-changing variety of mushrooms (maitakes, honshemejis, and shiitakes) are among the ingredients he uses to enhance crowd-pleasing entrées like smoked duck breast, grilled polenta, and our favorite, the perfectly seared swordfish that follows."
The New Brooklyn Cookbook by Melissa Vaughan and Brendan Vaughan, p 29
February 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tarantass
"Mikhail left for Siberia that night in a tarantass (a springless carriage) and covered the distance from Moscow to Irkutsk in fifteen days."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 278
February 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word artel
"In Yakushkin's memoir, he spends pages explaining the "artel" system the prisoners devised whereby everybody, those receiving generous stipends from home as well as those receiving little, contributed to a common account to ensure that no prisoner ever had to be in need."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, 276
February 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word froe
"At one end of the village, the old Trakt crossed a small river called the Esaulovka on an ancient ruined bridge. Its gray wooden crossbeams supported the ricketiest of planking; the planks were sawn lumber but the beams showed only the marks of a bladed tool like a froe or an adze."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 260
February 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word ataman
"Among his potential allies were worthies like the murderously anti-Bolshevik Cossack atamans Grigory Semeyonov and Ivan Kalmykov, who each controlled a stretch of Far Eastern railroad line."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 143
February 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word milt
"After salmon started coming to the nets, the food improved. Valentina made sautéed salmon steaks, and a soup of salmon heads and potatoes called ukha, and fried salmon liver and salmon milt with kasha, and salmon eggs and butter on thinly sliced black bread."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 104
February 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word boletus
"Picking up a boletus bigger than any I'd seen in my life, I hurried back across the tundra to the cabin. Everyone in our party had gone in there to drink tea and vodka and get warm."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 99
February 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word knout
"But in The Gulag Archipelago, I had read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's musings on the proper memorial for the forced labor camps of Stalin's time: "I visualize…," Solzhenitsyn wrote, "somewhere on a high point in the Kolyma, a most enormous Stalin, just such a size as he himself dreamed of, with mustaches many feet long and the bared fangs of a camp commandant, one hand holding the reins and the other wielding a knout with which to beat his team of hundreds of people harnessed in fives and all pulling hard. This would also be a fine sight on the edge of the Chukchi Peninsula next to the Bering Strait.""
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 84
February 8, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word barlow
"While improvising a fishing pole for Katya from a willow sapling, I cut deep into the ball of my thumb with my barlow pocketknife, and I made a fuss about that."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 42
February 7, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gerfalcon
"Part of The Secret History tells of the campaign of Genghis's son Jochi in 1207 against the People of the Forest. The campaign succeeded, and the People of the Forest submitted to Jochi, bringing him "white gerfalcons, white geldings, and black sables.""
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, pp 27-28
February 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word brumal
"Swann will hold two auctions, beginning with a selection of ocean-liner and other transportation memorabilia (posters, photo albums, embossed china, and the like) on Feb. 3, followed by one of vintage posters, one of the house's mainstays, on Feb. 8. The latter sale celebrates all things brumal, especially sport, and includes a group of posters from the nineteen-thirties, forties, and fifties related to Dartmouth's rambunctious Winter Carnival."
The New Yorker, February 7, 2011, p 19
February 5, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tularemia
"Galloway was authorized by the military to work on a specific set of threatening diseases that were considered potential weapons in war or in terrorism, including anthrax, smallpox, tularemia, plague, and the Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers."
"Going Viral" by David E. Hoffman, in The New Yorker, January 31, 2011, p 26
February 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bilharzia
"Long ago, when Naima was ill with bilharzia, Father, at Mother's insistence, brought me to visit her."
"Naima" by Hisham Matar, in The New Yorker, January 24, 2011, p 69
February 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word anagnorisis
"He realizes everything at once like the climax of a bad Hindi musical. And then, with a certain horrid glee, he gets to the fundamental truth of it, the anagnorisis: This incident alone will keep us two old boys going for the next forty years. It is the story to end all stories. It is the gift that keeps on giving."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 441 of the Vintage International paperback
February 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word galabia
"Naima had already changed out of her house galabia and into the hard fabric of her black dress, a veil wrapped tightly around her head, revealing the delicate shape of her skull."
"Naima" by Hisham Matar, in The New Yorker, January 24, 2011, p 64
February 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word buguyaga
""Oh, yes, surely day is de holy troot," said Hortense anxiously, fingering her plasticated carnations. "But at de same time, surely a Witness lady don' wan' look like a well, a buguyaga in de house of de Lord.""
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 321 of the Vintage International paperback
January 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word buguyaga
Jamaican - tramp - see here.
January 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pickelhaube
"Irie passed her the long hat pin that was sitting on top of a butter dish. Hortense set the plastic carnations straight on her hat and stabbed them fiercely, then brought the pin back up through the felt, leaving two inches of exposed silver sticking up from the hat like a German pickelhaube."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 320 of the Vintage International paperback
January 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gansey
""Irie, look at you! Pickney nah even got a gansey on—child must be freezin'! Shiverin' like a Mexico bean. Let me feel you. Fever! You bringin' fever into my house?"
It was important, in Hortense's presence, never to admit to illness. The cure, as in most Jamaican households, was always more painful than the symptoms."
White Teeth by Zadie Smth, p 316 of the Vintage International paperback
January 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hachure
"It was an extreme close-up of an extremely old man, the contours of his face clearly defined by line and shade, hachures on a topographic map."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 279 of the Vintage International paperback
January 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kaffir
""You see, Jones," said Samad, "the real mistake the viceroy made was to give the Sikhs any position of power, you see? Just because they have some limited success with the kaffir in Africa, he says Yes, Mr. Man, with your sweaty fat face and your silly fake English mustache and your pagri balanced like a large shit on the top of your head, you can be an officer, we will Indianize the army; go, go and fight in Italy, Rissaldar Major Pugri, Daffadar Pugri, with my grand old English troops! Mistake!""
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 75 of the Vintage International paperback
January 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word chappal
"Two weeks later, as Archie checked their route to Sofia, to no one in particular Samad said, "I should not be here."
As usual, he was ignored, most fiercely and resolutely by Archie, who wanted somehow to listen.
"I mean, I am educated, I am trained. I should be soaring with the Royal Airborne Force, shelling from on high! I am an officer! Not some mullah, some sepoy, wearing out my chappals in hard service. My grandfather Mangal Pande"—he looked around for the recognition the name deserved, but, being met only with blank pancake English faces, continued—"was the great hero of the Indian Mutiny!"
Silence."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, pp 74-75 of the Vintage International paperback
January 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word ackee
" "Mmm," said Ryan, who was happily shoveling a plate of ackee and saltfish into his mouth on the other side of the tiny kitchen table."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 33 of the Vintage International paperback
January 20, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word lapacho
"These cases you can see are made from lapacho, a wood that has no cracks that insects can penetrate; I ordered the shelves especially: they are ten hardwood boards stuck together with an insect-repellent glue, and I put glass fronts on them because books obviously accumulate dust."
The House of Paper by Carlos María Domínguez, translated by Nick Caistor, pp 36-37
January 15, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hispid
"I don't know what compelled me at age six to transplant a bunch of buttercups from the local non-playground at the bottom of our street to my father's garden. I don't know if my buttercups were of the cursed, bristly, early, hispid, creeping, bulbous, or common variety. They were yellow."
Night Bloom by Mary Cappello, p 95
January 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word firebrick
"Few visitors came to that room, and when they did, they had a tendency to ask, "Is this the bricks?" meaning Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII, made from, and consisting of, 120 firebricks, which to this day remains an exciting touchstone for art skeptics and philistines everywhere. I was delighted to be able to say, "No, it's not the bricks. It's the stones.""
The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson, pp 65-66
January 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word phenomime
"Instead of using various different words for walking, the Japanese use a common base verb, then add an assortment of phenomimes, which are used as adverbs. So aruku is the basic word meaning to walk, then chokochoko aruku is to toddle, noronoro aruku is to inch along, furafura aruku is to shamble or teeter, and zorozoro aruku is to swarm or cluster."
The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson, p 24
January 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word embonpoint
"then she goes over the clothes she needs, B said, above all drawers and a corset that fits like a glove, A said, she wants to keep her shape, and says she has too much belly, she ought to give up beer, B recalled, but that embonpoint is by no means Molly's weak point, A said,"
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 260
December 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hierogamy
"The union in the here and now becomes hieroghamic on The Sweets of Sin, Professor Jones said, though the oghamic script is here substituted for by the simple and modified Irish characters..."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 251
December 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word yashmak
"In a mirage of palm trees, the Cicerone said, an opulent Molly makes her apparition in Turkish costume and yashmak."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 217
December 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word obstropolos
"To continue the evolution of English prose, A said, it is noteworthy that at this time and in the bar, the barbarous bibulous boys break down into an English that recalls the nighttime dialect of Finnegans Wake.
"Shut your obstropolos," said B. Quiet your claptrap."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 195
December 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word dystocia
"Mrs. Purefoy's childbirth at the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street is a dystocia, or truly difficult labor. Almost as difficult as this chapter, said the Cicerone in the doorway to this white room of the House."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 187
December 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word opoponax
"And the smell, A said, because he sniffs the cheap rose perfume on Gerty's piece of cotton wool, and thinks of the one Molly uses.
Opoponax! B exclaimed. And at the opening of his waistcoat he also smells the lemon scent of his cake of soap."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 181
December 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word nainsook
"She leaned back to look at the shower of colors high in the sky, cupping one knee in her hands, and as he was the only one there to see, offered him the sight of her legs, her blue garters and white nainsook knickers, while something dark and soft slid across the lake of the sky, O! she trembled in all her limbs from leaning so far back, O! the blinding flash and a cascade of stars and dew gushed out and melted in the gray air around the main in black outlined against the rock."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 179
December 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word orchitis
"And to continue showing how little he fits into this brutal, enclosed atmosphere, Bloom gives a scientific lecture to the group, transfigured into Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft (although it's not exactly the scent of flowers that comes from his cigar), explaining to them all in graphic detail and expression, corpora cavernosa, etc., why hanged men have erections.
It's not orchitis, A said, perhaps remembering Mr. Flower."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 168
December 26, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word list
I wasn't familiar with "list" in the sense of "a strip of cloth" until now:
"Speaking of Rabelaisian lists, A said, the list (using the word in its sartorial sense) with the most historical and mythical weight here is the one the Citizen is wearing, in its epic-parodic transposition.
The row of stones hanging from his belt, B recalled, on which are carved the figures of numerous heroes and historical characters."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 164
December 26, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word paronomasia
"The riddle that Lenehan the sports reporter proposes to his colleagues and friends at the newspaper, the Cicerone said—"What opera resembles a railway line?"—is remembered by Bloom on several occasions throughout the day of Ulysses.
A few paragraphs further on, in the newspaper office, Lenehan proudly tells them the answer:
"The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!"
Railing at the rails, A said.
Paronomasia, Professor Jones said."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, pp 105-106
December 26, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word pisiform
"The kidney! B remembered. Bloom starts down the stairs like a startled stag.
The pisiform shape of that gland reminds me of something... said Professor Jones."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 68
December 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word goliard
"To see it with the eyes of a stranger, but also with those of a native shopkeeper, a bum, a housekeeper, a farmer and soldier, a priest and poet and patient and day-laborer and whore and journalist and concerned citizen and street sweeper...And with the eyes of all the dead, the vagabonds and popes, clerks and troubadours, fratres minores, prelates, goliards, painters, bankers, and truck drivers."
Arriving in Avignon by Daniël Robberechts, translated by Paul Vincent, p 136 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
December 24, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word machicolated
"It must be some thirty years after Sade's death that Mérimée, passing through Avignon, arranges for Enguerrand Charonton's Couronnement de la Vierge to be taken to the hospice of Villeneuve for safety; he writes: Avignon is filled with churches and palaces, all provided with battlemented and machicolated towers."
Arriving in Avignon by Daniël Robberechts, translated by Paul Vincent, p 115 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
December 24, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word béguinage
"A wide-arched passageway gives onto a peaceful alley-way planted almost like a garden, where a few children are chattering: "A béguinage," thinks the Fleming, but ordinary people live in the little houses."
Arriving in Avignon by Daniël Robberechts, translated by Paul Vincent, p 67 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
December 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word parage
"The Count lauded the men of Avignon for the way they had welcomed him, and promised them "the high esteem of all Christendom and of your own country; for you are bringing back chivalry, and Joy, and Parage.""
Arriving in Avignon by Daniël Robberechts, translated by Paul Vincent, p 65 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
December 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chicane
"20's Plenty, which King runs without pay, while managing his own small I.T. company, makes the case that restrained, good-natured driving in residential areas—tootling—is best achieved not by the fussy, expensive apparatus of speed bumps, chicanes, and school zones, but, rather, by area-wide speed limits of twenty miles per hour, such as were recently introduced in Portsmouth and several other British cities, thanks in part to King's activities."
"Tootling" by Ian Parker, in The New Yorker, December 6, 2010, p 31
December 12, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word colophony
"No significant cracks have emerged since the last restoration, when the paint surfaces were "consolidated"—their gaps filled in, Anne Grevenstein-Kruse wrote to me in an email, "with a solution of animal glue (a proteïn). After that, the surface was covered with a mixture of beeswax, colophony, and lavender oil (to soften the paint). This mixture was melted into the paint structure by using strong heating elements. The surface was then flattened with metal spatulas.""
"The Flip Side" by Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker, November 29, 2010, p 45
December 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word spikenard
"The sweet-woody animal odor of spikenard."
Seedlip and Sweet Apple by Arra Lynn Ross, p 17
December 6, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word seedlip
There's a book of poems by Arra Lynn Ross called Seedlip and Sweet Apple.
December 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word iroko
"Walnut storage from BoConcept echoes the warmth of the external iroko cladding, while the travertine flooring picks up the tones of the house's original stone walls."
Homes & Interiors Scotland, September & October 2009, p 79
December 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word gib-board
"The inner passage was lined with gib-board, and narrower still: if two actors met in the middle they had to perform a quick shuffling rotating embrace, like an animate turnstile revolving in the dark."
The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton, p 75 (US edition)
December 1, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word urucum
"And given that I am addicted to moqueca de camarão—a rich shrimp stew, traditionally cooked with urucum berries, chili, onions, lime juice, coconut milk, and palm oil, dusted with toasted manioc flour, and served on rice—which I ate for the first time that year at a restaurant in Ipanema, I keep my tipiti in the living room as a memento mori of all the Canela who must have died, looking for ways to make their manioc roots safe and tasty."
"Down Under" by Jane Kramer, in the New Yorker, November 22, 2010, p 84
November 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word urucum
aka annatto or achiote - see this page for more
November 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word kickshaw
"Eleanor had grown up with little idea of what went on in a kitchen, but she was a quick study. By the time she became, as the Washington Post put it, "the first Housewife of the Nation," she had developed a straightforward message about her culinary goals. "I am doing away with all the kickshaws—no hothouse grapes—nothing out of season," she told a reporter who inquired about the "economy menus," and added that she intended to provide "good and well-cooked food." Few guests or family members felt that she succeeded."
"The First Kitchen" by Laura Shapiro, in the New Yorker, November 22, 2010, p 76
November 28, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word emmer
"Since June 2009, wheat, buckwheat, and rye flours have been on sale at their Greenmarket stalls, as well as corn meals, polentas, and whole grains such as emmer, barley, and oats—all grown upstate."
"Breadwinners" by Indrani Sen, in Edible Brooklyn No. 19, Fall 2010, p 43
November 26, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word agnatic
"For them, going to the cinema was to perform a ritual, to share a common sentiment, to feel in concert and confirm their agnatic solidarity."
The Clash of Images by Abdelfattah Kilito, translated by Robyn Creswell, p 88
November 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word marabout
"The marabout (what was its name, exactly?) was mostly visited by women and children. Young ones afflicted with terrible manias were brought there to have their heads knocked gently against the tomb of the saint."
The Clash of Images by Abdelfattah Kilito, translated by Robyn Creswell, p 13
November 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bourdon
"Didn't I tell you?" Monsieur Trouvé was grinning like a little boy. He had a good pair of lungs in that wide chest of his, so he continued to yell after them. "I replaced our original model with one of Eugène's bourdon tubes, activated by gunpowder charges. I did say I had taken a keen interest recently."
Blameless by Gail Carriger, p 131
November 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word dado
"He holds his head back warily, defiantly, on his shoulders, so that the furnishings in this house won't get the better of him: the dado with its raised pattern of diamonds under thick brown paint, the polished wood of the hall stand, the yellow gleams of brass among the shadows—the face of the clock, a rack for letters, a little gong hanging in a frame with a suède-covered mallet balanced across two hooks, a tall pot to hold umbrellas."
"The Trojan Prince" by Tessa Hadley, in The New Yorker, November 15, 2010, page 77
November 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the user knitandpurl
yarb, thanks - you're right that a Witch Grass list would be fun - maybe if I re-read it ... :)
November 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word squiffy
"'I would have you know I was perfectly safe in that hive. It was only when I left that things went all'—she waved a hand airily—'squiffy'."
Soulless by Gail Carriger, p 105
November 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word claviger
"It must take a lot of effort to keep a man like him tidy. Not to mention well tailored. He was bigger than most. She had to give credit to his valet, who must be a particularly tolerant claviger."
Soulless by Gail Carriger, p 13
November 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word catawampus
"He looked up from his examinations, his face all catawampus from the glassicals."
Soulless by Gail Carriger, p 12
November 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hydromel
"Etienne swallowed the potion that had been placed in front of him, a potion very probably made of bidet water, the nectar of brothels and the hydromel of whorehouses."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 298 of the NYRB paperback
November 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word nubecula
"At dawn the passenger trains started running again, damp and cold, their windows foggy and whitish, like eyes covered in nubeculae."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 222 of the NYRB paperback
November 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word wittol
"Whereupon Themistocles decides to put his oar in, he turns toward Meussieu Pic and says, point-blank:
'You're a wit, old Pic.'
'Me, a wittol!' (he suffocates). 'But Meussieu I won't allow you to insult me like that! To say nothing of my wife! I respect the French army, Meussieu; and you, you ought to respect the sanctity of the French family. Me, a wittol, ho! At my age, to be insulted by a, by a...Ho!'
He gets up and starts waving his arms about wildly. The ladies calm him down. Madame Pic looks puzzled; fortunately, she doesn't know what a wittol is. Themistocles, alarmed at the effect he has produced, tries to justify himself.
'But it was a pun!'"
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 197 of the NYRB paperback
November 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word zygomatic
"But zygomatic muscles are sufficiently stretched, and gullets sufficiently sonorous, for us to be able to state that sympathy and cordiality reign."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 187 of the NYRB paperback
November 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word crepitate
"Applause crepitates, the magician bows, and the wedding party has still not arrived."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 181 of the NYRB paperback
November 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chine
Pause for laughter.
Q. What's the difference between an asthmatic pork-butcher and a party given by intellectuals?
A. One's all chine and wheeze, and the other's all wine and cheese.
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 174 of the NYRB paperback
November 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word balneal
"Sitting on a broad, flat stone, that he had chosen with care, Etienne was following with listless eye the reduced activity of his balneal colleagues."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 169 of the NYRB paperback
November 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word glanders
"The doctor had not notified them of any contagious diseases in the area belonging to the commune; the hens wouldn't have to fear the staggers, the pigs swine fever, the turkeys the pip, the cows mammitis, the dogs rabies or the horses glanders."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 145 of the NYRB paperback
November 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word coenesthetic
"He drew a vertical line,
and nothing was left but coenesthetic impressions: his stomach hollowing, his temples hollowing, his fontanel hollowing, and then turning into a sort of well, of well, of well without bottom or rim, into which stones fall indefinitely, without ever coming into contact with the surface of the black water entirely and forever bereft of light and movement, the surface of this perfectly carbonic, arachnoid water, the skin of a brain.
"Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, pp 127-128 the NYRB paperback
November 6, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word kümmel
"Ernestine, happy days are here! No more French fries and white wine! No more chemicals and suburban trains! No more of my brother's attentions and my sister-in-law's insults! No more work! No more being broke! It's gigolos for us, and bottles of kümmel!"
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 114 of the NYRB paperback
November 6, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word triturate
"They're triturating each other."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 100 of the NYRB paperback
November 6, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word malaxate
"They're malaxating each other's ribs."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 100 of the NYRB paperback
November 6, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word labefy
"Yes, I'm labefying my crumpet with all these nigmenogs," replies Théo volubly.
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 80 of the NYRB paperback
November 6, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word galimatias
"It's all amphigories and dillydallying," she told herself, "rigamarole and bibble-babble, balderdash and fiddle-faddle, gibberish and galamatias."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 76 of the NYRB paperback
November 6, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word furunculous
"I'm wondering whether it wouldn't also be human to apply a similar treatment to you; you would thus be spared a furunculous and degraded youth."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 53 of the NYRB paperback
November 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word marc
"At the back, the kitchen (?), another table where two women and a man are playing cards and sipping some marc. No one else."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 33 of the NYRB paperback
November 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word turnip
A (clunky) watch - see http://thesaurus.com/browse/clock
"So she put her fur wrapper back on, looked at the time on an enormous old turnip which she took out of a carpetbag, paid for her camomile tea, leaving a most ungratifying gratuity for the waiter, and left, in despair."
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright, p 29 of the NYRB paperback
November 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hurdle
I knew of hurdles in the sense of something-one-jumps-over, but didn't know it was a kind of fence actually used for livestock.
"I was learning how to make leather rope and tan leather and weave hurdles, and a dozen other useful things."
The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones, p 26
October 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the list cloudstreet
Yes, I did like it - the writing was a really satisfying mix of the everyday and the lyrical. A lot of the book's a pretty straight family saga, which isn't what I usually read, but there was enough magic/mystery/literariness to keep it fun for me.
October 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bucina
See buccina.
"Into that opened book leaped the first barbarian, leaped and vanished, and the next after him and the next, and then, by twos and threes and sixes and sevens, they leaped in and disappeared, amid gasping and shouting and the nearing sound of the bucina and of the trumpets of Rome."
The Magic City by E. Nesbit, p 198 of the SeaStar Books paperback
October 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word glacis
"The Dwelling seemed to be a sort of town of rounded buildings more like lime-kilns than anything else, with arched doors leading to dark insides. They were all built of tiny stones, such as lay on the beach. Beyond the huts or houses towered the castle, a vast rough structure with towers and arches and buttresses and bastions and glacis and bridges and a great moat all around it."
The Magic City by E. Nesbit, p 119 of the SeaStar Books paperback
October 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word laburnum
"Philip straggled away to the window and looked out dismally at the soaked lawn and the dripping laburnum trees, and the row of raindrops hanging fat and full on the iron gate."
The Magic City by E. Nesbit, p 3 of the SeaStar Books paperback edition
October 28, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word rotenone
"Does the electric field have weak spots where fish can pass? Does a winter-time influx of road salt in the water cause the charge to fluctuate? What about when the current must be turned off for maintenance of the bars or cables? Is the rotenone chemical fish killer administered when the current is off effective without fail?"
"Fish Out of Water" by Ian Frazier, in the New Yorker, October 25, 2010, p 71
October 28, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word shakuhachi
"The first concert shows the venue's variety: Ensemble East, a group that plays traditional Japanese instruments, performs works by such composers as Tadao Sawai, Michio Miyagi, and James Nyoraku Schleger (on shakuhachi)."
The New Yorker, October 25, 2010, p 20
October 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word polder
"Their big pile, which weighs down the middle of the island with its austere vernacular chunkiness, is dubbed 'Holland', because of some Traill's dubious notion that this green lozenge resembled the fertile polders of the Netherlands."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 228
October 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word animadvert
"If I animadvert on Rackham it's because of what happened to Mr & Mrs Ralph this week."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 197
October 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word flocculent
"Tully, northern Queensland, Australia. The sugar mill belches smoke as thick and flocculent as candyfloss."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 194
October 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word sessile
"Sessile oak, beech and silver birch crowd around the sandy track, the sunlight twinkles from between the interlocking boughs, the little boys cavort, the adolescents even begin to frolic a bit."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 154
Note that the Sessile Oak is a thing unto itself, but in the course of looking it up I looked up the general meaning of "sessile" too.
October 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word pantile
"How he hates the suburbs — I can see the distaste etched all over his face. I know what he feels like, how the red brick, the pantiles, the stained-glass fanlights are all bearing down on him — because I felt exactly the same way at his age, as if I was about to be suffocated by the sheer orderliness of all the neat verges and linseed-oiled garage doors."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 154
October 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word gurn
"Four or five video screens dangle from the dark ceiling of the shop, and four or five Britney Spears jiggle and jive and gurn."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 152
October 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word acuminate
"From the stern keep of the Norman overlord issued forth decrees and exactions; in a world of wood, wheat and water, its high stone walls were the most adamantine confirmation of the temporal order, just as the acuminate spire of the church pricked the oppressive heavens."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 145
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word pelf
"Of course, he isn't literally a fishmonger (I don't believe he even likes fish), because this is a City Livery Company, and while the Fishmongers' retains more links with the trade than, say, the Goldsmiths' it is in essence a living fossil; a medieval guild, cemented to the Square Mile like an oyster, through which flows a great current of nutritious pelf."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 138
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word khlong
"The garden of the house ran nearly down to the river, and a few minutes' walk away was a khlong where we could catch the longtail boats into the city centre."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 130
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word aguardiente
"The minibar in the hotel was no help. It was called the Selfbar — so I took it personally and downed the lot: the scotches, the vodkas, the gins and the Amazonian armpit aguardientes."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 123
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word maqui
"But eventually strolls in pine-scented woods and thyme-reeking maquis palled."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 113
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word vitelline
"In truth, Bendor was so bizarre that it quite neutralised the effect of the LSD; and it wasn't until we were back in Bandol, at one of those café-bars that charges forty quid for a vitelline-hued cocktail in a glass the size of a vitrine, that I remembered I was hallucinating."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 113
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word wonga
"Money: this is the true Blarney Stone of Dublin — kiss it and you'll talk all night. The city is awash with wonga."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 104
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word soutane
"The youthful populace of Dublin are being sucked out of the churches by the ideological vacuum; on to the streets, then into the bars and restaurants which have colonised the city centre. Where once burly men in soutanes enforced the creed, now burly men in black overcoats enforce the guest list."
Psychogeograpy by Will Self, 102
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word testudo
"So measured and theatrical was the riot that I had time to appreciate the way the police formed up into small shielded testudos, lost ground, broke, then reformed, as bottles and bricks crashed down on Plexiglas."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 101
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word caries
"The dentist and I sat in his dusty surgery under a diorama of curiously garish posters depicting dental caries."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 93
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word titchy
"It was the second batch of majoun that decided me. The first was forgivably small, but the second was titchy."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 93
October 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chillum
"The Buddhist knelt and prayed angrily, while I shared a chillum with a crusty sadhu."
Psychogeography by Will Self, p 85
October 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word maidan
"We went to the railway station so that I could buy a ticket for the Himigiri-Howrah Express, a mighty Aryan iron horse that would drag me clear across the north of the subcontinent to Chandigarh. I got a chitty from Window A and took it for authorisation to Window B. At Window B I received a second chitty and took it to the Sales Booth. Every single step had to be taken through a dense thicket of humanity; thorny limbs pricked me, twiggy fingers scratched me. I emerged blinking and bedevilled into the harsh light of the maidan."
Psychogeography by Will Self, p 85
October 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word anoesis
"Normally, on my long-distance walks, anoesis descends within a few miles: the mental tape loop of infuriating resentments, or inane pop lyrics, or nonce phrases gives way to the greeny-beige noise of the outdoors."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 39-40
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word oasthouse
"Up ahead looms the brick, oasthouse-shape of the Shot Tower, where shot was manufactured in the nineteenth century; globules of molten lead plummeting into deadly spheroids."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 36
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word saccade
"I gain the crest of the hill and there it is, falling away behind me, swags and ruches of greenery and brick, under the blue-painted ceiling of its recent conversion: New London, city of the toppermost property prices. I can see a golden drop of sunlight on the glans of the Swiss Re Tower (Lord Foster's phallus, commonly known as the Gherkin), and the inverted pool table of Battersea Power Station. I can see the Hampstead massif and the Telecom Tower. I can see my life, entire, in a single saccade."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 31
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word farouche
"I've never liked Richmond Park's contrived ambience of the farouche — a centuries' old shtick."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 30
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word biltong
"These are, perforce, strips of biltong — the sign didn't lie. This has to be the biggest biltong emporium in the northern hemisphere. There are hundreds of strips of the stuff: chilli-flavoured biltong, garlic biltong, biltong flavoured any number of ways. How many hard-masticating South Africans must London contain in order to support this minimart full of beef jerky?"
Psychogeography by Will Self, p 30
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cagoule
"I left Stockwell in cagoule and cashmere pullover, but as I gain Putney Bridge I strip to my own T-shirt and sit at a zinc-topped table outside a branch of Carluccio's, sipping a latte and eating an almond pastry."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 28
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word remise
"It occurs to me that if I am akin to any literary traveller, it's Laurence Sterne, oscillating in the moment, dizzied by impressions and unable to make it from the remise door to the Calais Inn, let alone progress into France and Italy."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 23
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word stook
"In the gutter are stooks of faded flowers in cellophane funnels, together with handwritten condolence cards: the wayside shrine of contemporary folk religion."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 21
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hypostatisation
"And so it went on: the grapes of wrath trailed across Afghanistan and Iraq, the bitter vendage of civilian deaths, then the hypostatisation of terror through the cirrhotic liver of another failed state."
Psychogeography by Will Self, 17
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word gee-gee
"Mine are not writerly journeys in the accepted sense: Rouseeau philosophising à pied, Goethe rattling into Switzerland in a coach, Cobbett on his clopping gee-gee, assorted Borrows and Stevensons plodding with their donkeys, Greene rocking on a train, Thesiger with a camel up his arse."
Psychogeography by Will Self, p 12
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word epigone
"the very obvious references to eero saarinen and S.O.M. may have secured jacobsen's name as a cool modernist at the time, but they also made him look like an epigone with a deft hand at furniture design, a view of jacobsen you can still meet, not least here in denmark."
See
October 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word periphrasis
"as the animals grow tired of our zen mistakes—
sitting Indian-style in airliner seats
that have washed up on the shore,
calling the snake a rope and the rope a belt—
initiates of a time periphrasis so elaborate
that even Virgil gets a little cross"
from Postpoem by Rick Snyder, in Escape from Combray, p 9
October 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word jugged hare
"I am not fond of jugged hare for dinner, either as a light entrée or as a pièce de résistance; but this accomplished attendant had the art of presenting you such a dish in a manner that persuaded you, for the time, that it was worthy of your serious consideration. The hare, by the way, before being subjected to the mysterious operation of jugging, might have been seen dangling from a hook in the bar of the inn, together with a choice collection of other viands."
"An English Winter Watering-Place," p 159 of the Oxford paperback edition of English Hours
October 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bioswale
"There were roads and weeds—the city's landscaping was taking root at a remote nursery—and swells of clayish soil that made bioswales of the central park."
In Utopia by J.C. Hallman, p 225
October 6, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word terebinth
"The vegetation on the trail—terebinth and spiny hawthorn—was dry and gnarled."
"The Unconsoled" by George Packer, p 61 of the September 27, 2010 edition of The New Yokrer
October 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word jugged hare
From the Epicurious food dictionary,: "A classic English preparation that begins with cut pieces of HARE that are soaked in a red wine-juniper berry marinade for at least a day. The marinated meat is well browned, then combined in a casserole (traditionally a heatproof crock or jug) with vegetables, seasonings and stock, and baked. When the meat and vegetables are done, the juices are poured off and combined with cream and the reserved hare blood and pulverized liver. The strained sauce is served over the "jugged" hare and vegetables.
© Copyright Barron's Educational Services, Inc. 1995 based on THE FOOD LOVER'S COMPANION, 2nd edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst."
October 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word crocket
"At the top of the street, into which, with my guide-book, I relapsed, was an old market-cross of the fifteenth century—a florid, romantic little structure. It consists of a stone pavilion, with open sides and a number of pinnacles and crockets and buttresses, besides a goodly medallion of the high-nosed visage of Charles I, which was placed above one of the arches, at the Restoration, in compensation for the violent havoc wrought upon the little town by the Parliamentary soldiers, who had wrested the place from the Royalists and who amused themselves, in their grim fashion, with infinite hacking and hewing in the cathedral."
"English Vignettes" in English Hours by Henry James, p 147 of the Oxford paperback edition
September 28, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cicatrix
"This is your first impression as you travel (naturally by the objectionable conveyance) from Ryde to Ventnor; and the fact that the train rumbles along very smoothly and stops at half a dozen little stations, where the groups on the platform enable you to perceive that the population consists almost exclusively of gentlemen in costumes suggestive of unlimited leisure for attention to cravats and trousers (an immensely large class in England), of old ladies of the species denominated in France rentières, of young ladies of the highly educated and sketching variety, this circumstance fails to reconcile you to the chartered cicatrix which forms your course."
"English Vignettes" in English Hours by Henry James, pp 142-143 of the Oxford paperback edition
September 28, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word rugosity
"But I watched the watery sunshine upon the rugosities of its ancient masonry; I stood a while in the shade of two or three spreading yews which stretched their black arms over graves decorated for Easter, according to the custom of that country, with garlands of primrose and dog-violet; and I reflected that in a 'wild' region it was a blessing to have so quiet a place of refuge as that."
"English Vignettes" in English Hours by Henry James, p 141 of the Oxford paperback edition
September 28, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word casemate
"The new life and the old have melted together; there is no dividing-line. In the drawing-room wall there is a queer funnel-shaped hole, with the broad end inward, like a small casemate. You ask what it is, but people have forgotten. It is something of the monks; it is a mere detail."
"Abbeys and Castles" in English Hours by Henry James, p 134 of the Oxford paperback edition
September 28, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word alembicated
"He was indeed a wonderful mixture of the universal and the alembicated."
"Browning in Westminster Abbey by Henry James, in English Hours, p 34 of the Oxford University Press paperback
September 18, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word transpontine
"Who are they all, and where are they going, and whence have they come, and what smoking kitchens and gaping portals and marshalled flunkeys are prepared to receive them, from the southernmost limits of a loosely interpreted, an almost transpontine Belgravia, to the hyperborean confines of St John's Wood?"
"London" in English Hours by Henry James, p 27 of the Oxford paperback edition
September 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word scuppernong
"There will be snide routines about the local wine. Our table isn't ready, and I walk ahead of my daughter and take a seat at the bar. To spite her, I order a scuppernong champagne."
- From "The Landlord" by Wells Tower, in The New Yorker, September 13, 2010, p 69
September 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word twit
I knew this word as a noun but not as a verb - until I read this:
"The view from the bridge over the Serpentine has an extraordinary nobleness, and it has often seemed to me that the Londoner twitted with his low standard may point to it with every confidence."
English Hours by Henry James, p 10 of the Oxford University Press paperback edition
September 12, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word globeflower
Wikipedia says: "The Globe-flower (Trollius europaeus) is a perennial plant of the family Ranunculaceae.
It grows up to 60 cm high with a bright yellow, globe-shaped flower up to 3 cm across."
September 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word globeflower
"I sipped my tea and looked at the strangely random garden with its funny mix of yellow globeflowers and pink azaleas and tall, green nandins."
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin, p 285
September 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word balmacaan
"She wore a man's wrinkled, white balmacaan coat, a thin yellow sweater, blue jeans, and two bracelets on one wrist."
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin, p 220
September 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word junsai
According to http://www.tasteofculture.com/display-text.php?pd_key=85,
"A member of the water lily family, junsai grows in clumps in natural ponds and irrigation reservoirs. A perennial water grass, junsai's flower is a deep maroon-red. It is the young, unfurled sprout covered in a slippery, transparent jelly, which is the culinary item prized by so many Japanese. Fresh sprouts come to market early in the summer.
Junsai and related Brasenia water plants grow in lakes, ponds and slow streams in many parts of the world, including much of North America and Europe. "
September 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word junsai
"I nodded, swallowing a mouthful of clear soup with fresh junsai greens."
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin, p 68
September 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word sabot
"A girl wearing sabots clip-clopped across the asphalt roadway, and next to the streetcar barn four or five kids were throwing rocks at a line of empty cans."
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin, p 64
September 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word zelkova
"A huge, towering zelkova tree stood just inside the front gate. People said it was at least a hundred and fifty years old. Standing at its base, you could look up and see nothing of the sky through its dense cover of green leaves."
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin, p 11
September 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word links
"The word comes from Old English and refers to a coastal topography behind a beach, a somewhat dunal and undulating landscape, untillable, under bushes of prickly gorse, scattered heather, and a thin turf of marram and other grasses. Scotland is necklaced by these essentially treeless linkslands, brought up from the deep by the crustal rebounding of a region once depressed by glacial ice, links about as vulnerable to sea surges as Los Angeles is to earthquakes, common grazings good for little else but the invention of public games, where marine whirlwinds could blow out the turf and create ancestral bunkers—for example, Turnberry, Muirfield, Dornoch, Crail, Carnoustie, Prestwick, Royal Troon."
"Linksland and Bottle" by John McPhee, in The New Yorker, September 6, 2010, p 50
September 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word drumlin
"In Scotland, the natural courses come in three main forms: the linksland courses by the sea, the moorland courses everywhere, and the forested parkland courses of the interior, some involving eskers, drumlins, and lateral moraines, but all the result of various glacial effects."
"Linksland and Bottle" by John McPhee, in The New Yorker, September 6, 2010, pp 48-49
September 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word swale
"In this treeless and littoral terrain, the waters beside it did not suggest to me the Savannah River, but Jerris's concentration was on the swales, hollows, and longitudinal mounds of the fairways."
"Linksland and Bottle" by John McPhee, in The New Yorker, September 6, 2010, p 48
September 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word eristic
"But whatever clever eristic moves you make, there's a problem on the horizon—extreme academe is heading our way." "Will the Book Survive Generation Text?" by Carlin Romano, in The Chronicle Review
September 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word timbromania
"Between 1860 and 1863, the first stamp catalogs were issued (in Belgium, Britain, France, and the United States), specialty magazines for stamp collectors appeared in several countries, a Frenchman published the first stamp album, and another Frenchman coined the term "philately," which replaced "timbromania" as the name of this popular pastime."
Waiting for the Weekend by Witold Rybczynski, p 197
August 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word kozo
"He laughs. 'I'll never understand why it is that you can build huge sculptures that withstand gale force winds, deal with dye recipes, cook kozo, and all that, and you can't do anything whatsoever with food. It's amazing.'"
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, p 81 of the Harcourt paperback edition
August 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word abaca
"Clare comes in carrying an armful of abaca fiber."
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, p 106 of the Harcourt paperback edition
August 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word lights
"By scrimping and saving, making Christmas presents for everyone herself and being very sweet and cajoling to the butcher, Kathleen managed to buy Leo raw lights every other day, and still saved enough to give him a red rubber ball for Christmas."
Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones, pp 79-80 of the 2001 hardcover edition
July 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word jiggery-pokery
"'Look here,' he said, 'I'm beginning to think there's been some jiggery-pokery somewhere.'"
Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones, p 73 of the 2001 hardcover edition
July 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word tombola
The intranet at my workplace mentioned a fundraiser at our company's UK office that featured "Cake, gift, craft and book stalls, a tombola, nail painting" etc. I don't think I'd ever heard of a tombola before - the OED online describes it as "A kind of lottery resembling lotto," which seems slightly vague to me, though looking at the OED entry for lotto sheds some light: "A game played with cards divided into numbered and blank squares and numbered discs to be drawn on the principle of a lottery. Each player has one or more cards before him; one of the discs is drawn from a bag, and its number called; a counter is placed on the square that has the same number, the player who first gets one row covered being the winner."
July 21, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word misprision
"This kind of thing—a Dutchman from 1800 speaking English like Bill Sikes—goes with the fictional territory, I suppose, and Mitchell, to be fair, is alert to the misprision of translation and cultural transmission: the book has many scenes in which the fumbling Dutchmen and Japanese clink the cracked cups of their different languages together, while meaning leaks away."
"The Floating Library" by James Wood in the New Yorker, July 5, 2010, p 72
July 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word husting
"Corporate executives facing down hostile shareholders load their pockets full of numbers. So do politicians on the hustings, doctors counseling patients and fans abusing their local sports franchise on talk radio."
"The Data-Driven Life" by Gary Wolf (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all)
July 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word leister
" ... the vinegared
and leistered sealed in tins, delicious with saltines,"
"The Sink" by Catherine Bowman in The New Yorker, June 28, 2010, p 36
July 14, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word lemures
" fermented lemures, fiery spectres,
embottled spirit vapors swirling in the crude"
"The Sink" by Catherine Bowman in The New Yorker, June 28, 2010, p 36
July 14, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word lemniscus
"... socket wrenches, lost twine, wire lei,
sink-funk, steel-wool lemnisci, leitmotifs
of oily sacraments ... "
"The Sink" by Catherine Bowman in The New Yorker, June 28, 2010, p 36
July 14, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word rowel
"They were the eyes of a dwindling life, of a horse accustomed to the rowel on her silver bit, to a man's grim hand on her headstall."
"Twins" by C.E. Morgan, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 131
July 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word surbate
"She stood there with a ragged cob in her eyes and surbate hooves almost too tender to walk upon, but she was tall, and still awesome in her shabbiness."
"Twins" by C.E. Morgan, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 130
July 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word spavined
"Always be hot up in here," the woman said and she made a half-hearted gesture over her shoulder at the spavined house, but she wasn't looking back toward the house; her gaze had drifted down first to Almon, then inched its way over to Mickey.
"Twins" by C.E. Morgan, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 124
July 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word agnate
"This was Cincinnati—the capital of pork, the first truly American city—sprawled before the eyes of two little boys under the momentary aegis of one Mike Shaughnessy, truck driver, half-hearted Lothario, collector of children, poor Irish agnate, known in high school as that fucking Irish fuck."
"Twins" by C.E. Morgan in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 123
July 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word viga
"He walked under the vigas of the porch and knocked."
"The Kid" by Salvatore Scibona, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 118
July 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chamisa
"The chamisa pollen caught in his nose and broke his heart."
"The Kid" by Salvatore Scibona, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 118
July 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cantillate
"She cantillated the name as if she either knew a Clarissa or were trying to remember if she did."
"Dayward" by ZZ Packer, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 111
July 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word clowder
"After the smoke and cordite cleared and the clowder of little-girl voices quit their chiming screams, Lazarus touched his temple, his finger finding a dab of blood no bigger than a drop of claret."
"Dayward" by ZZ Packer, in The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010, page 109
July 13, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fichu
"One was very likely in a crotchet and a fichu. The other's a spinster of the sparse, sharp-nosed sort, all blue stockings and social causes."
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, p 57
July 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word sported oak
" 'Mr. Dunworthy's had to turn the Senior Common Room into an office. She has no respect at all for the sported oak or the notion of knocking, so Mr. Dunworthy's had to devise an outer and inner office, though I personally think a moat would have been more effective.'"
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, p 21
The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang says a sported oak = a sporting door, which is "a door closed against intruders: university."
July 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word kakemono
"To enter any public space, be it a restaurant in Gion or a dark little café in the narrow streets of Shinjuku, a tiny basket or lacquer shop whose smallness is apparent as soon as you walk in the door, you have to bend over on entering and walk with your head down while contorting yourself around the shelves, all the time making sure you don't bang your head against a kakemono or knock over an entire shelf of precious ceramics, tea pots, or little saké glasses with your backpack while turning around."
Self-portrait abroad by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, translated by John Lambert, p 35
July 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word paten
""... Also a silver paten and chalice, a wooden crucifix, a silver wafer box, the Epistles, the Gospels, and the regimental colors of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Seventh Battalion," he read."
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, p 4
July 2, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word parclose
"The bishop's bird stump had stood on a wrought-iron stand in front of the parclose screen of the Smiths' Chapel."
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, p 2
July 1, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word oakum
"He did what he was told to do as long as he was able, picking oakum until exhaustion stopped him, or helping to push the heavy handle of the bone grinder round and round until his body failed and he had to be half carried, half dragged back to his pallet."
The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff, p 155
June 26, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word flitch
"Before the hard days of winter set in, he slaughtered the pig, and for a week stayed at home with the job of butchering. The dogs feasted on bones and scraps, and Pell roasted the head. Dogman salted the flitches and sold the rest."
The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff, p 144
June 26, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hobby
I didn't know a hobby was a bird 'til I read this: "If the walking hadn't been so strenuous, she might have enjoyed the view more, the great rolling swards of chalk grassland stretching out golden in all directions, skies dotted with hobby and merlin, circling, anxious to be off south."
- The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff, p 95
June 26, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word frumenty
"They passed within twenty yards of each other on either side of the frumenty seller's striped tent, Pell and Bean heading toward the grounds of the cathedral, Joe Ridley to the nearest tavern."
The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff, p 38
June 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word clamp
This was a new-to-me sense of this word: "To cover, as vegetables, with earth." See a potato clamp here: http://www.self-sufficient.co.uk/Potato-Clamp-Storing-Potatoes.htm. I read about it in The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff: "With what Pell and the boys earned out of doors, and all that Lou, Bean, Ellen, and Sally accomplished at home, the pantry would be filled for winter with fruit in jars, apples set on racks, potatoes in the clamp, hanging bacon, and maize flour ground arduously by hand to save paying the miller" (p 33).
June 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word diabase
"Downriver, the great bridge brackets the receding city—Morningside and midtown and the Village valley and Wall Street. What they see in the ground glass is a fifty-fifty ratio of concentrated city and tree-covered diabase-palisade cliffs, with a fjord running through."
"Under the Cloth" in Silk Parachute by John McPhee, p 133
June 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word neurocity
In the Princeton huddle before play resumed, Bill Tierney studied Damien Davis, looking beyond his eyes and into his neurocity to see if maybe Damien —once burned, twice vulnerable—would prefer that Ryan Mollett cover Powell.
- Spin Right, Shoot Left -- in The Silk Parachute by John McPhee, p 95
June 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bourn
“When he was nineteen, in Massachusetts, he was Lord Mountararat in “Iolanthe”. Now he is Hal Doyne-Lear on the chalky bourn—Gloucester with eyes.”
“Season on the Chalk” by John McPhee, in Silk Parachute, p 35
June 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the user feedback
Just wanted to chime in that the comment weirdness seems not just to be with nested quotes - double quotation marks seem not to be working at all for me, including when used in a href links, meaning I can't currently post a comment containing a link to anything outside of Wordnik. For now I can post things-that-look-like-double-quotes using code, e.g. & # 147 to make this: “ - but just using the double-quotation-mark key on the keyboard doesn't work.
June 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bail
“In a group, you follow a guide with two electric lanterns, suspended from bails like railroad lanterns.”
Season on the Chalk by John McPhee, in Silk Parachute, p 27
I wasn't familiar with the handle-of-a-kettle-or-a-pail-or-a-lantern sense of this word until now.
June 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word gnoseological
The cloakroom attendant would then have to chase after them and would not have time to write her essay about gnoseological dunes.
The Other City by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Gerald Turner, pp 42-43
June 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word gnoseological
See gnoseology.
June 17, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word casuarina
"As for my mother, no inoculation could have saved her. So I left her there, under the casuarinas."
The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet, translated by Willard Wood, p 94
June 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word lazaret
"Biscuits again! In a few days, just you watch, there will be more worms than flour."
"I wouldn't mind taking a peek at the food stores in the lazaret."
The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet, translated by Willard Wood, p 83
June 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word knucklebones
"I preferred playing knucklebones on the abandoned graves of the old cemetery, which I had turned into my private garden."
The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet, translated by Willard Wood, p 18
June 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word harebell
"With the other children, I would run off and play among the harebells along the old sentry path. A mass of rubble, really, but the pillar of my enchanted world."
The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet, translated by Willard Wood, p 17
June 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word guipure
"I see my mother at her spinning wheel, surrounded by pewter and tapestries, engravings and leather-work. Muslin, lace, and guipure."
The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet, translated by Willard Wood, p 16
June 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word martlet
"I'm not one of those side-whiskered dandies, high-waisted and well favord, who warble their love like martlets and chirp about the future."
The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet, translated by Willard Wood, p 11
June 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word haimish
"On the other hand, some of them were mysteriously, sinisterly rich, and built showy McMansions that had no place in haimish Forest Hills."
Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm in The New Yorker, May 3, 2010, p 43
June 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word murrain
"Mrs. Gaddson was there, searching eagerly through her Bible for murrains and agues and emerods."
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 397
May 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word samite
"There had apparently been vestments as well as wine in the envoy's luggage. The bishop's envoy wore a black velvet chasuble over his dazzlingly white vestments, and the monk was resplendent in yards of samite and gilt embroidery."
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 283
May 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word wadmal
"Lady Eliwys brought me a brown wadmal kirtle and mustard-colored surcote to wear, and a sort of kerchief to cover my chopped-off hair (not a wimple and coif, so Eliwys must still think I'm a maiden, in spite of all Imeyne's talk about "daltrisses")."
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 157
May 26, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word solar
I hadn't known the "private living quarters of the lord" sense of this word.
As in: "I remember a church, and I think this is a manor house. I'm in a bedroom or a solar, and it's not just a loft because there are stairs, so that means the house of a minor baron at least."
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 116
May 26, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hemoptysis
"The doctor took a stethoscope down from the wall, untangling the chestpiece from the connecting cord. "Any hemoptysis?"
She shook her head."
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 90
May 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cyanosis
"She didn't look at Badri either. She read the monitors one by one, and then asked, "Indications of pleural involvement?"
"Cyanosis and chills," the nurse said."
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 90
May 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word thermistor
"We don't have one," he said, plugging the feed into the shunt. "Just a thermistor and temps."
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 41
May 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cannula
"Mary swabbed at the arm again and slid a cannula under the skin. Badri's eyes fluttered open."
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 40
May 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word manchet
""I need to know the language and the customs," she said, leaning over Dunworthy's desk, "and the money and table manners and things. Did you know they didn't use plates? They used flat loaves of bread called manchets, and when they finished eating their meat, they broke them into pieces and ate them. I need someone to teach me things like that, so I won't make mistakes.""
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 7
May 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word scrofula
""Somewhere in Scotland," he said bitterly. "And meanwhile, Gilchrist is sending Kivrin into a century which is clearly a ten, a century which had scrofula and the plague and burned Joan of Arc at the stake.""
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, p 5
May 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word kemp
"The mercers sell the well-kempt gents les vêtements de Sèvres: felt berets, kemp fezzes, tweed spencers, crewneck vests, serge breeches, cheverel belts."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 105
May 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word epergne
"Czech pewterers mend pewter kettles; then the street sellers sell these mended vessels: ewers, cressets (even epergnes)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 104
May 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word glaive
"Wells of shadow; E, the whitewash of mists and tents,
glaives of icebergs, albino kings, frostbit fennels;"
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 85
May 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word mundungus
"Ubu burns unburnt mundungus."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 78
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word grugru
"Such pumps suck up mush plus muck — dung lumps (plus clumps), turd hunks (plus chunks): grugru grubs plus fungus slugs mulch up humus pulp."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 78
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word sulcus
"Scum plus crud plugs up ducts; thus Ubu must flush such sulcus ruts."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 78
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cruth
"Ubu drums drums, plus Ubu strums cruths (such hubbub, such ruckus): thump, thump; thrum, thrum."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 77
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word tondo
"Profs who do schoolwork on Pollock look for photobooks on Orozco or Rothko (two tomfools who throw bold colors, blotch on blotch, onto tondos of dropcloth)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 76
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word thoron
"Orbs of phosphor throw off bolts of hot volts (googols of bosons from photoprotons of thoron)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 75
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bromo
"Folk doctors cook pots of bromo from roots of bloodwort or toothwort — common worts for common colds."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 74
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bromo
According to Merriam-Webster, "a dose of a proprietary effervescent mixture used as a headache remedy, sedative, and antacid ; also : such a proprietary product".
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hoopoo
"Zoos known to stock zoomorphs (crocs or komodos, coons or bonobos) show off odd fowl: condors, hoopoos, flocks of owls or loons (not flocks of rocs or dodos)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 69
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word smolt
"Brown storks flock to brooks to look for schools of smolt or schools of snook."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 69
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word moonwort
aka money plant, honesty, lunaria ...
"Long fronds of moonwort, know to grow from offshoot growths of rootstock, grow on moss bogs of sod."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 68
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bowwood
"Scows from Toronto tow lots of logs thrown onto pontoons: tons of softwood, tons of cordwood — block on block of woof good for woodwork: boxwood, bowwood, dogwood, logwood (most sorts of wood sold to workfolks who work for old woodshops)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 66
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word intimism
"(Is this intimism civilizing if Klimt limns it, if Liszt lilts it?)"
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 58
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word intimism
According to the Tate: "Originally, a French term applied to the quiet domestic scenes of Bonnard and Vuillard. Since applied widely to any painting of such subject matter. An outstanding example is Gwen John."
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word phthisis
"Sick with phthisis in this drizzling mist, I limp, sniffling, spitting bilic spit, itching livid skin (skin which is tingling with stinging pinpricks)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 55
May 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word lich
"Is it this grim lich, which is writhing in its pit, lifting its lid with whitish limbs, rising, vivific, with ill will in its mind, victimizing kids timid with fright?"
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 54
May 21, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word siskin
"Midspring brings with it singing birds, six kinds (finch, siskin, ibis, tit, pipit, swift), whistling shrill chirps, trilling chirr chirr in high pitch."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 52
May 21, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word thew
"Greek schemers seek egress en ténèbres, then enter the melee — the welter where berserk tempers seethe whenever men's mettle, then men's fettle, gets tested; there, the Greek berserkers sever men's thews, then shred men's flesh."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 44
May 21, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word kevel
"The December sleet drenches the tethered nets, then threshes the fettered pegs; hence, the deckmen wedge the kevels, then check the kedges; nevertheless, these vessels teeter."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 41
May 21, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word xebec
"The steersmen steer the xebecs between steep, sheer clefts, where reefs prevent sheltered berth; there, the tempests whelm the decks, then wreck the keels — the helms, left crewless whenever the elements beset these crewmen."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 41
May 21, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cataplasm
"Hassan asks that a shaman abstract a talc cataplasm that can thwart a blatant rash (raw scars that can scar a man's scalp and gall a man's glans: scratch, scratch)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 30
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word half-track
Tanks clank and clack, as halftracks attack flatcars and tramcars: bang, bang."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 29
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word vaward
"Vaward attacks blast apart hangars and tarmacs: blam, blam."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 29
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word brassard
"A Slav warman as gallant as Galahad (and D'Artagnan) clasps a scabbard and draws a katana that can smash a man's brassards and slash a man's flancards."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 28
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word atlatl
"A Rwandan man-at-arms grasps an atlatl and casts a fatal shaft that can stab a grand marshall."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 28
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word tarn
"A black asp crawls past a sawgrass marsh that has algal tarns."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 27
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word addax
"A jackal stalks an addax. A Manx cat nabs a pack rat."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 27
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word jacamar
"A bantam jacamar can stand athwart a jacaranda branch and catch all scarabs that gnaw at sassafras bark."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 27
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word caracara
"Hawks and larks dart past tamaracks, as jackdaws and mallards flap past catalpas and land athwart a larch (sparhawks and caracaras scrawk at blackcaps and avadavats)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 27
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word caracal
"Hassan can watch as a marksman tracks a stag, a hart and a fawn, and at last bags a ram (a bwana as smart as Tarzan can trap all mammals: alpacas and llamas, caracals and pandas, aardvarks that can catch larval ants).
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 27
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word padparadschah
an orange-pink sapphire - see http://www.minerals.net/gemstone/gemstone/sapphire/sapphire.htm
"Hassan can fast-talk a chap at a watchstand and pawn a small watch that has, as a watchglass, a star padparadschah (half a grand, a carat."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 23
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chapman
"A chapman at a standard hatstand can hawk panama hats, canvas caps and tartan tams."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 20
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word dammar
"A haggard almsman can drag a handcart and hawk glass jars (racks and racks): agar-agar — dammar lac and balsam sap (half a franc, a flask)."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 20
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cadastral
"A ranch-man at a ranch warns campagnards that a shah has spat at hard-and-fast laws that ban cadastral graft."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 19
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cataclasm
"A hag as mad as Cassandra warns a shah that bad karma attracts phantasmal cataclasms."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 17
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word khat
"Hassan wants a catnap and grabs, as a calmant, hash, grass and smack, khat, ganja and tabac — an amalgam that can spark a pharmacal flashback."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 17
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word marc
"Hassan can ask that a barman at a bar tap a cask and draw a man a draft (half a dram, a glass): marc, grappa and armagnac, malt, arrack and schnapps."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 16
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word tantara
"A sax drawls tantaras (all A-flats and an A-sharp): fa-la-la-la-la."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 15
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the list monovocalics
Have you read Eunoia by Christian Bök? http://archives.chbooks.com/online_books/eunoia/text.html
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word czardas
"Fans clap as a fat-cat jazzman and a bad-ass bassman blab gangsta rap — a gangland fad that attacks what Brahms and Franck call art: a Balkan czardas, a Tartar tandava (sarabands that can charm a saltant chap at a danza).
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 15
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fasnacht
"Hassan asks that a vassal grant a man jam tarts and bananas, jam flans and casabas, halva, pappadam and challah, babka, fasnacht and baklava."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 14
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cassabanana
"Hassan wants Kalamata shawarma, cassabananas and taramasalata."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 14
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word skald
"A pagan skald chants a dark saga (a Mahabharata), as a papal cabal blackballs all annals and tracts, all dramas and psalms: Kant and Kafka, Marx and Marat."
Eunoia by Christian Bök (upgraded edition), p 12
May 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word pantechnicon
"Several muscular workers, dressed in overalls, had lugged the set from the back of a pantechnicon and into the drawing room."
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, p 346
May 10, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cosh
""I've said too much," she said, flustered. "It's the sherry, you see. Alf always says as 'ow sherry coshes the guard what's supposed to be keepin' watch on my tongue.""
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, p 275
May 10, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word prang
"Later, at the police station in the village, the Spitfire pilot paid me a visit. He was with a squadron based at Catterick, and had taken his machine up to check the controls after the mechanics had made a few adjustments. He had not the slightest intention of getting into a scrap that day, he told me, but there we were, Wolfgang and I, suddenly in his gunsights over Haworth. What else could he do?
'Hell of a prang. Bad luck, old chap.' he said. 'Damned sorry about your friend.'"
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, pp 216-217
May 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word miscible
"Excitedly, I added to the mixture a couple of drops of my homemade chloroform, which, since chloroform is not miscible in water, sank promptly to the bottom."
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, p 106
May 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word tormentor
""Stage right," I said. "Behind the black tormentor curtains."
Rupert blinked once or twice, shot me a barbed look, and clattered back up the narrow steps to the stage. For a few moments we could hear him muttering away to himself up there, punctuated by the metallic sounds of panels being opened and slammed, and switches clicked on and off."
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, p 34
May 9, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word shawm
"After a little while he no longer heard the drums, the lutes, the flutes (or shawms) as concert, or as any kind of music."
Don Juan: His Own Version by Peter Handke, translated by Krishna Winston, p 56
April 14, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word soutane
"He saw the orthodox priest arriving from the neighboring village after a long hike over hills and through rocky gullies. His floor-length black soutane was spattered up to the knee with yellow clay and pollen from the broom blossoms."
Don Juan: His Own Version by Peter Handke, translated by Krishna Winston, p 43
April 14, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word serinette
"Serenade of serinettes" - from "World without Birds" by Robin Ekiss
April 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word poleax
Whenever I see this word I want to say it in my head like "pole-ee-ax" even though I know it's not. I just came across it in a review in the New Yorker of a production of The Glass Menagerie.
April 10, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word widgie
"Her red hair is cut flat and short, and it occurs to Rose that if the girl waits long enough it'll actually come into fashion, especially if she had a tendency to hang around at the Snakepit and be a widgie. But she can't see it. Red has the look of a hopelessly sporty girl."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 294 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
April 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word spider
"In Australia and New Zealand, however, an ice cream soda is often called a spider."
April 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word spider
"She got friendly with a few decent-looking blokes who took her to the flicks at the Piccadilly or the Capitol and then shouted her a milkshake or a spider before putting her on the bus home."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 280 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
April 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word widgie
See Bodgies and Widgies: "Bodgies and Widgies refer to a youth subculture that existed in Australia and New Zealand in the 1950s, similar to the Teddy Boy culture in the UK or Greaser culture in the US. The males were called Bodgies and the females were called Widgies."
April 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word larrikin
"It was the same blokes at the Embassy tonight, the larrikins in suits, the quiet movers with brandy on their breath and Brylcreem in their hair. The ones with vagrant hands, the ones with bad teeth, broken noses, feet like snowshoes, bellies like baskets."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 278 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
April 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word drongo
"Lester smiled. Don't ever join the army.
Geez, one army's enough.
She's a good woman, Quick. She's worth two of me.
But she makes a lousy pasty.
Go on, you drongo."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 257 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
April 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word shonky
"How many blokes dyou owe?
One fella who owns all the fellas. He's a nasty cove.
What're they gunna do?
Work it out of me, I spose. There's plenty of shonky jobs they'll want done."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 234 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
April 1, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word whacko
"From his gladstone bag the stranger takes a bottle and a loaf of white bread.
Whacko, says Quick.
The black man pulls him off a hunk of bread and Quick takes it. Then the bottle."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 209 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
April 1, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word goanna
Goanna brand history
April 1, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word goanna
"Quick woke again and there was Wentworth's daughter, Lucy. She was rubbing his blistered skin with goanna oil."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 202 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
April 1, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word damper
"In his duffel bag he finds an old linty piece of damper and hunkers down by the fire, resisting the need to pee."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 196 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
April 1, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word karri
"It's the smell of a karri forest rising into the sky and the bodies of roos and possums returning to the earth as carbon and the cooking smell falling through the dimness like this."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 184 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
April 1, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word scrubber
Australian slang: "someone who's rough, low quality"
"They showed her where to get the best pie and chips in Murray Street, the very thought of which kept her off lunch in general, and they introduced Rose to the addiction of listening in. They were silly, dizzy scrubbers, and she liked them"
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, pp 181-182 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word brass razoo
"We haven't got a brass razoo.
I wonder why. What you don't drink, the old man gives to the bookies."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 162 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word snag
Australian slang: sausage
"She leaves the spuds boiling on the stove and the snags spitting on low heat to go upstairs to listen to him tinkling on the piano."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 158 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word grouse
"It's ridiculous -- she's too old for him and he's a slow learner and a tenant and a Lamb, for gawdsake, but he's just the grousest looking boy, and his hot blue eyes make you go racy inside."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 159 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bottler
"something terrific" (Australian slang)
"Yer a bottler, Doll, he said the first night, pressing her up against the cool bricks. Bet yer old man's a millionaire, the way you look."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 153 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cove
"Now and then she'd find herself out the back lane against the fence with some sweetmouthed bloke whose name she could almost remember, a cove who didn't mind if she kept talking while he ran his hands about."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 153 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word goog
"It was all too complicated. Everything was. Unless you were full as a good. Then it was simple, then all of it was straight in a girl's mind."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, pp 152-153 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word goog
Australian slang - drunk
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bonzer
"He's a right card, the other women would say, a real bonzer.
A real dag, love. Oh, to have him round the house."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 144 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word shickered
"Ted was the old girl's favourite. Rose often saw her patting and stroking him when she was half shickered. Ted didn't seem to care what she did at all."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 142 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word clinkerbuilt
"The boat is a good sixteen feet, clinkerbuilt and heavy as hell. A big skiff sort of boat, and it takes about a second and a half for it to be obvious that it'll never fit across the tray of the truck."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 109 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word gladstone bag
"Monday. Rose ran home from school and waited for Sam to show. Even the old girl seemed nervous, up there cooking his tea.
He came swinging his gladstone bag into the yard."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 85 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word lair
Australian slang: a flashily-dressed young man
"At the Tivoli, said Lester, and then The Blue Room. Ooh, I was a lair then. All the best people'd sing me songs. I wrote for the best of em."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 72 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word nong
"I didn't know you were married before, said Elaine, lips aquiver.
Eee-laine, you nong, said Hat. 1914 to 1918. She'd hafta start havin em at age twelve to get six out, not to mention one off to war. She was born the year of Federation, 1901.
Well, said Lester. Margaret River School obviously taught Hat more than groomin and deportation."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 71 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word clobber
"Oriel doesn't realize it, but she begins to dress Fish like an idiot, the way people clothe big sadfaced mongoloids. She hoiks his trousers up under his arms with a belt so long it flaps. She combs his hair straight down on this brow and shines his shoes till they mock him. The reason Oriel doesn't notice is that Quick gets to him early after breakfast and drags the clobber round on him, messes him up like a boy, normal and slouchy."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 70 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 31, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word pommy
"He was a waistcoat and watch chain type and he spoke like the pommy officers Lester remembered from his days in the Light Horse."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 65 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 30, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chook
"By May, when a chill had come into the nights and the street was subdued and indoorsy after dark with the Lambs' chooks racked along their perch like mumbling hats, and the air so still you could hear the sea miles off and the river tide eating at the land, Lester and Oriel went to bed bonesore but grateful."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 63 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 30, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word ratbag
"Red was just a tomboy, she didn't think about smiling or not smiling. There was a gap, now that Fish wasn't being the ratbag of the family, and Red was out to fill it. She beat boys at cricket and she terrorized the bike sheds at school with the way she could throw a punch."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 63 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 30, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word troppo
To go troppo = to go crazy because of the heat (Australian slang)
"They were boys with the voices of men, and it sent the Lamb girls absolutely troppo."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 63 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 30, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fair dinkum
"It was where you could smell that daft beanpole husband of hers baking his cakes, though, fair dinkum, you had to hand it to the coot, he could bake his way to Parliament if he set his mind to it."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 50 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 30, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bullroarer
"The huge livingroom window was gone and a shutter stood propped open in its place opening up on a view of that grand old room full of pineboard shelves bowing with jars and jugs, the fireplace bristling with humbugs and bullroarers and toothbusters."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 57 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 30, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word spare
to go spare = to get angry, to go berserk
"They'd worn a track across the weeds since dawn, and the cratchety tinkle of that little bell had driven her spare, but she wasn't going to go down there early and give her tenants the satisfaction of gloating."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 57 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word flame tree
"In the park at the end of the street the flame trees and the Moreton Bay figs covered the grass with their broad, brittle leaves that Dolly Pickles kicked up in drifts as she walked alone when the children were at school and she was waiting for the copper to boil in the laundry or she just couldn't stand to be in that big old place anymore, avoiding the plain gaze of that little Lamb woman as she went stiffbooted about her neverending business."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 52 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word boondie
"That autumn the street seemed full. There were always Pickles kids and Lamb kids up one end of the street throwing boondies or chasing someone's dog."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 51 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word boondie
From The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English:
1 in Western Australia, a rock. Probably from an Australian Aboriginal languagge
2 in Western Australia, a piece of conglomerated sand used by children to throw at one another in play
March 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word reffo
"Rose Pickles and her brothers saw them unloading the dust-white truck. They made a crowd standing about down there, and they looked so skinny and tired. They carried a big jarrah table in but no chairs. There were teachests, a clock, shovels and hoes, a couple of bashed old trunks. They all struggled and heaved up the stairs with that little woman barking instructions.
Cripes, Ted said. And I thought we looked like reffoes."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 50 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 29, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word digger
"And he'd lost his postcard from Egypt, the one he got from his dad's cousin, Earl. Back in '43 he wrote a letter to cheer up a digger. He addressed it: Earl Blunt, EGYPT, and it found him, just as he assumed it would. And a card came back, an exotic picture from another world. He'd stuck it somewhere secret and had bamboozled himself with his own cunning."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 46 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word jarrah
"Down the middle of the yard, from the house to the back pickets, was a tin fence which cut the yard in half. The wooden frame was jarrah; it smelt of gum and was the colour of sunburn."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 44 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word paperbark
melaleuca.
"She looks up and sees Lester and the boys hauling the net up onto the beach. The water is flat behind them. She can almost see the trees etched out on the other bank, the paperbarks where the dunes begin."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 28 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cobbler
South Australian cobbler: a fish with poisonous dorsal fins
March 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word grizzle
"I'll take the boys.
They're not tall enough, Oriel Lamb says.
Ah, the girls grizzle too much. Drives me mad.
Put on yer shoes or yull be stung. Don't want any cobbler stings. Can't stand your grizzlin."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 26 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word dag
"This time the truck goes up the hill in reverse and the kids elbow each other and feel a right bunch of dags heading up like that, but they're the first to see the rivermouth, the oilstill river and roiling sea; it looks so like a picture they're suddenly quiet."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 26 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word carn
"Carn, Dad! someone calls from behind the cab.
The man spits out the window, lets the brake off, and they roll back."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 25 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word mulie
Urban Dictionary says it's "Western Australian slang term for the "Southern Blue Pilchard", a small fish roughly 5-6 inches in length and commonly sold in large frozen blocks and used as bait by anglers, especially those fishing for tailor."
"When he baited up, the gang of hooks always slipped sideways in the mulie and ended up buried in his palm."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 21 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hayburner
"Some people are lucky, she heard him say. Joel, he's lucky. Got a good business. His hayburners win. See, I got me ole man's blood. Dead unlucky."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 20 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chiack
bilby, thanks - in my head I'd been (mis)pronouncing it with a ch- like change rather than an sh- like shy.
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word compo
"No money came in. No compo. Sam didn't go on the dole."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 18 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word dill
Australian slang: an idiot.
"Oh, he'd made her laugh so many times, making a dill of himself to make her happy."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 16 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word dreckly
"We'll be back dreckly. Dad might be awake, eh."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 16 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cactus
Australian slang for dead.
"Dolly saw it was his right hand. His bloody working hand. A man could hardly pick his nose with a thumb and half a pointer. They were done for; stuffed, cactus."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 15 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word patterson's curse
"Sam Pickles grew up on that racetrack, hanging around the stables or by the final turn where the Patterson's Curse grew knee high and the ground vibrated with all that passing flesh."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 11 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word thunderbox
"He headed for the thunderbox with gulls, terns, shags and cockroaches watching him come."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 9 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word staggerjuice
"There's ginger beer, staggerjuice and hot flasks of tea."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 1 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word staggerjuice
Also "stagger-juice,": A dictionary of slang and unconventional English says it's "Strong liquor: Cockney and Aus.: earlier C. 20. in the RN it = Navy rum (Granville)."
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chiack
to tease or banter - Australian
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chiack
"Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 1 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 25, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word silverside
"Be it salmon, skate, gammon or a silverside of beef, the ancient art of bringing something to tenderness by letting it blip and blop in not-quite-boiling water appeals not because of its robustness, but for its gentle tone."
Eating for England by Nigel Slater, p 209
March 24, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word rissole
"'Makes a nice luncheon dish,' say so many old cookery books, especially when talking of rissoles or stuffed marrow, or some other silk purse carefully hewn from a sow's ear."
Eating for England by Nigel Slater, p 194
March 24, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word saveloy
"Those who peddle frozen fish clad in batter as thick as their shop's Formica counter tops, with jars of sad pickled eggs and a lone, armour-plated saveloy waiting patiently for someone drunk enough to order it, are still around."
Eating for England by Nigel Slater, p 179
March 24, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word tracklement
Re: Branston Pickle: "Its manufacturers advise that their mud-hued, syrupy tracklement sits well with burgers and hot dogs, yet in truth most of it will find its way into cheese sandwiches."
Eating for England by Nigel Slater, p 150
March 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word tracklement
According to worldwidewords.org it's "any kind of savoury condiment served with meat."
March 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chudleigh
"Cornwall's peel-flecked heavy cake would keep you going until you got to feast on Devon's cream-filled chudleighs, before moving swiftly along through treasures such as Somerset's crumbly catterns, Dorset apple, and the sultana-spiked Norfolk vinegar cake."
Eating for England by Nigel Slater, pp 45-46
March 21, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cattern
See lacemakers' cattern cakes.
March 21, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chudleigh
aka Devonshire splits
March 21, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word persillade
"And then, just as we Brits abandon our stew to the hungry hordes gathered at the table, the cooks of other nations will add a vital snap of freshness and vigour to lift it from its sleepy brown torpor: the French their persillade of vivid parsley, anchovy and lemon; the Moroccans a slick of tongue-tingling harissa the color of a rusty bucket; and the Italians a pool of hot, salty salsa verde pungent with basil, mustard, and mint."
-Eating for England by Nigel Slater, p 2
March 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cotechino
"The Italians, though less likely to use alcohol, will add body to the simplest stew of boneless brisket with the introduction of a whole, cheap tongue and a gelatinous, collagen-rich cotechino sausage."
- Eating for England by Nigel Slater, p 2
March 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word beard
I don't think I'd ever heard "beard" used as a verb meaning "to confront boldly" until now:
"Already she was beginning to be carried away by the idea of bearding Gert Bigger in her den. She imagined herself armed with a great book from which she read strange grim-sounding incantations, magic words that would bring Gert Bigger to her knees and make her bring Mrs. Zimmermann back from . . . from wherever Gert Bigger had sent her."
The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring by John Bellairs, p 132 of the Puffin paperback edition.
March 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word klaberjass
A card game. See http://www.bicyclecards.com/game-rules/klaberjass/39.php?page_id=32 -- "Klaberjass" means "clover jack" (that is, the jack of clubs)."
"The party that night turned out to be so much fun that Rose Rita forgot all about her troubles. She even forgot that she was supposed to be mad at Lewis. Mrs. Zimmermann taught Lewis and Rose Rita a couple of new card games (klaberjass and six-pack bezique, Winston Churchill's favorite card game), and Jonathan did one of his magic illusions, where he made everyone think that they were stumping across the floor of the Atlantic in diving suits. They visited some sunken galleons and the wreck of the Titanic, and even watched an octopus fight."
The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring by John Bellairs, p 8 of the Puffin paperback edition
March 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word galley-west
"As Lewis chanted, the room began to get darker. The light faded from the bright orange leaves of the maple tree outside, and now a strong wind was rattling the glass doors. Suddenly the doors flew open, and the wind got into the room. It riffled madly through the dictionary on the library table, scattered papers across the floor, and knocked all the lampshades galley-west."
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs, p 54 of the Puffin paperback edition
March 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word faytour
Lewis had the long curved parcel. When he had ripped the paper off one end, he saw the tarnished brass hilt of a sword. "Oh boy!" he said. "A real sword!" He ripped the rest of the paper off and started swinging the sword around. Fortunately, it was still in its sheath.
"Have at thee for a foul faytour!" he shouted, lunging at Rose Rita with the sword.
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs, p 19 of the Puffin paperback edition
March 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word aroint
"Mrs. Izard turned around. She faced Mrs. Zimmermann calmly. "So it's you," she said. "Well, my power has not reached its height, but I am still strong enough to deal with you. Aroint ye!"
She pointed the ivory cane at Mrs. Zimmermann. Nothing happened. She stopped smiling and dropped her cane."
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, by John Bellairs, p 152 of the Puffin Books paperback edition
March 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word spiraea
"When spring came, Lewis was surprised to see that the hedge in front of the Hanchett house was wildly overgrown. It was a spiraea hedge, and had always had bristly little pink-and-white blossoms. This spring there were no blossoms on the hedge; it had turned into a dark, thorny thicket that completely hid the first floor windows and sent long waving tendrils up to scrape at the zinc gutter troughs. Burdocks and ailanthus trees had grown up overnight near the house; their branches screened the second-story windows."
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, by John Bellairs, p 122 of the Puffin Books paperback edition
March 2, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word spiraea
also, meadowsweet
March 2, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word izzard
"Old Isaac Izard—his name is odd, isn't it? Mrs. Zimmermann thinks that it comes from izzard, which in some parts of England is the word for zed, which is the word the English use to identify the letter Z. I go along with Mrs. Zimmermann's theory because I can't think of a better one. And besides, she is a Z-lady, so she should know."
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, by John Bellairs, p 33 of the Puffin Books paperback edition
March 1, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word glittering
"It was the belief that Robert had been loved, and loved for so long, by Rachel that had made her desire him, had made her reject more glittering matches; it seemed that he was making a sort of concession to her in marrying her."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 930 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word limpid
"He spoke to no one but his wife; the rest of the hotel appeared not to exist for him; but whenever a waiter came to take an order, and stood close beside him, he swiftly raised his blue eyes and darted a glance at him which did not last for more than two seconds, but in its limpid penetration seemed to indicate a kind of investigative curiosity entirely different from that which might have inspired any ordinary diner scrutinising, even at greater length, a page or waiter with a view to making humorous or other observations about him which he would communicate to his friends."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 926 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"What is more, people whose own hearts are not directly involved always regard unfortunate entanglements, disastrous marriages, as though one were free to choose whom one loves, and do not take into account the exquisite mirage which love projects and which envelops so entirely and so uniquely the person with whom one is in love that the "folly" a man commits by marrying his cook or the mistress of his best friend is as a rule the only poetical action that he performs in the course of his existence."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 923 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word prie-dieu
"It is the wisdom inspired by the Muse whom it is best to ignore for as long as possible if we wish to retain some freshness of impressions, some creative power, but whom even those who have ignored her meet in the evening of their lives in the nave of an old country church, at a point when suddenly they feel less susceptible to the eternal beauty expressed in the carvings on the altar than to the thought of the vicissitudes of fortune which those carvings have undergone, passing into a famous private collection or a chapel, from there to a museum, then returning at length to the church, or to the feeling that as they walk around it they may be treading upon a flagstone almost endowed with thought, which is made of the ashes of Arnauld or Pascal, or simply to deciphering (forming perhaps a mental picture of a fresh-faced country girl) on the brass plate of a wooden prie-dieu the names of the daughters of the squire or the notable—the Muse who has gathered up everything that the more exalted Muses of philosophy and art have rejected, everything that is not founded upon truth, everything that is merely contingent, but that reveals other laws as well: the Muse of History."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 919 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hawthorn
"And then, you've talked so often to Saint-Loup about the hawthorns and lilacs and irises at Tansonville, he'll see what you meant now."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 918 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word whist
"But even in the case of a man of real merit, it is a quality not to be despised by the person who admits him into his private life, and one that makes him particularly useful if he can also play whist."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 915 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word glittering
"People still remembered that the most grandiose and glittering receptions in Paris, as brilliant as those given by the Princesse de Guermantes, had been those of Mme de Marsantes, Saint-Loup's mother."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 912 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word azure
"After walking across the garden of the Arena in the glare of the sun, I entered the Giotto chapel, the entire ceiling of which and the background of the frescoes are so blue that it seems as though the radiant daylight has crossed the threshold with the human visitor in order to give its pure sky a momentary breather in the coolness and shade, a sky merely of a slightly deeper blue now that it is rid of the glitter of the sunlight, as in those brief moments when, though no cloud is to be seen, the sun has turned its gaze elsewhere and the azure, softer still, grows deeper."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 878 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word cerise
"Finally, before leaving the picture, my eyes came back to the shore, swarming with the everyday Venetian life of the period. I looked at the barber wiping his razor, at the negro humping his barrel, at the Muslims conversing, at the noblemen in wide-sleeved brocade and damask robes and hats of cerise velvet, and suddenly I felt a slight gnawing at my heart."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 877 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word azure
"And during the few minutes that the Prince was standing beside their table, M. de Norpois never ceased for an instant to keep his azure pupils trained on Mme de Villeparisis, with the mixture of indulgence and severity of an old lover, but principally from fear of her committing one of those verbal solecisms which he had relished but which he dreaded."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 858 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word glittering
"But at the same time (because of the always urban character of the impressions which Venice gives almost in the open sea, on those waters whose ebb and flow makes itself felt twice daily, and which alternately cover at high tide and uncover and low tide the splendid outside stairs of the palaces), as we should have done in Paris on the boulevards, in the Champs-Elysées, in the Bois, in any wide and fashionable avenue, we passed the most elegant women in the hazy evening light, almost all foreigners, who, languidly reclining against the cushions of their floating carriages, followed one another in procession, stopped in front of a palace where they had a friend to call on, sent to inquire whether she was at home, and while, as they waited for the answer, they prepared to leave a card just in case, as they would have done at the door of the Hôtel de Guermantes, turned to their guidebooks to find out the period and the style of the palace, being shaken the while, as upon the crest of a blue wave, by the wash of the glittering, swirling water, which took alarm at finding itself pent between the dancing gondola and the resounding marble."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 852-853 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word glittering
"When, at ten o'clock in the morning, my shutters were thrown open, I saw blazing there, instead of the gleaming black marble into which the slates of Saint-Hilaire used to turn, the golden angel on the campanile of St Mark's. Glittering in a sunlight which made it almost impossible to keep one's eyes upon it, this angel promised me, with its outstretched arms, for the moment when I appeared on the Piazzetta half an hour later, a joy more certain than any that it could ever in the past have been bidden to announce to men of good will."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 844 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 22, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word syringa
"The spray of syringa made me profoundly sad, as did also the thought that Albertine could have believed, and said, that I was treacherous and hostile; and most of all, perhaps, certain lies so unexpected that I had difficulty in grasping them."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 828 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word syringa
"Then I thought again of the evening of the syringa, and remembered that about a fortnight later, as my jealousy kept changing its object, I had asked Albertine whether she had ever had relations with Andrée, and she had replied: "Oh! never! Of course, I adore Andrée; I have a deep affection for her, but as I might have for a sister, and even if I had the tastes which you seem to suppose, she's the last person I should have thought of in that connexion. I can swear to you by anything you like, the honour of my aunt, the grave of my poor mother." I had believed her."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 827 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word syringa
"At all events, nobody could ever mention syringa again in her hearing without her turning crimson and putting her hand over her face in the hope of hiding her blushes."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 813 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word syringa
"But we lost our heads all the same, so that to conceal our embarrassment we both of us, without having a chance to consult each other, had the same idea: to pretend to dread the scent of syringa which as a matter of fact we adored."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 812 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fragmentary
"The memory of Albertine had become so fragmentary that it no longer caused me any sadness and was no more now than a transition to fresh desires, like a chord which announces a change of key."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 809 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fragmentary
"The persistence within me of an old impulse to work, to make up for lost time, to change my way of life, or rather to begin to live, gave me the illusion that I was still as young as in the past; and yet the memory of all the events that had succeeded one another in my life (and also of those that had succeeded one another in my heart, for when one has greatly changed, one is misled into supposing that one has lived longer) in the course of those last months of Albertine's existence, had made them seem to me much longer than a year, and now this forgetfulness of so many things, separating me by gulfs of space from quite recent events which they made me think remote, because I had had what is called "the time" to forget them, by its fragmentary, irregular interpolation in my memory—like a thick fog at sea which obliterates all the landmarks—distorted, dislocated my sense of distance in time, contracted in one place, distended in another, and made me suppose myself now further away from things, now much closer to them, than I really was."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 802-803 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word efflorescence
""Oh! not in the least," exclaimed Mme de Guermantes, who had a keen sense of these provincial differences and drew portraits that were sober and restrained but coloured by her husky, golden voice, beneath the gentle efflorescence of her violet-blue eyes."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 794 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"As for Gilberte, she was all the more glad to find the subject being dropped, in that she herself was only too anxious to drop it, having inherited from Swann his exquisite tact combined with a delightful intelligence that was recognised and appreciated by the Duke and Duchess, who begged her to come again soon."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 786 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"However, when Swann was dead, it happened that her determination not to know his daughter had ceased to provide Mme de Guermantes with all the satisfactions of pride, independence, "self-government" and cruelty which she was capable of deriving from it and which had come to an end with the passing of the man who had given her the exquisite sensation that she was resisting him, that he could not compel her to revoke her decrees."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 780 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fragmentary
"We have of the universe only inchoate, fragmentary visions, which we complement by arbitrary associations of ideas, creative of dangerous illusions."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 775 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word transparent
"Those passages which, when I wrote them, were so colourless in comparison with my thought, so complicated and opaque in comparison with my harmonious and transparent vision, so full of gaps which I had not managed to fill, that the reading of them was a torture to me, had only accentuated in me the sense of my own impotence and of my incurable lack of talent."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 770 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 18, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"Which of us has not experienced in the course of his life exquisite uncertainties more or less similar to this? A charitable friend, to whom one describes a girl one has seen at a ball, concludes from the description that she must be one of his friends and invites one to meet her. But among so many others, and on the basis of a mere verbal portrait, is there not a possibility of error? The girl you are about to see may well turn out to be a different girl from the one you desire."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 761 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 18, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word agate
"It is the tragedy of other people that they are merely showcases for the very perishable collections of one's own mind. For this very reason one bases upon them projects which have all the fervour of thought; but thought languishes and memory decays: the day would come when I would readily admit the first comer to Albertine's room, as I had without the slightest regret given Albertine the agate marble or other gifts that I had received from Gilberte."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 751-752 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 18, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hawthorn
"Gradually, as the love that Albertine may have felt for certain women ceased to cause me pain, it attached those women to my past, made them somehow more real, as the memory of Combray gave to buttercups and hawthorn blossom a greater reality than to unfamiliar flowers."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 746 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 18, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"Hearing it from a neighbouring room without being able to see, one may mistake for uncontrollable laughter the noise which is forced by pain from a patient being operated on without an anaesthetic; and as for the noise emitted by a mother who has just been told that her child has died, it can seem to us, if we are unaware of its origin, as difficult to translate into human terms as the noise emitted by an animal or by a harp. It takes us a little time to realise that those two noises express what, by analogy with the (very different) sensations we ourselves may have felt, we call pain; and it took me some time, too, to understand that this noise expressed what, by analogy with the (very different) sensations I myself had felt, I called pleasure; and the pleasure must have been very great to overwhelm to this extent the person who was expressing it and to extract from her this strange utterance which seemed to describe and comment on all the phases of the exquisite drama which the young woman was living through and which was concealed from my eyes by the curtain that is for ever lowered for other people over what happens in the mysterious intimacy of every human creature."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 741-742 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 18, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word voluptuous
"Alas, remembering my own agitation whenever I had caught sight of a girl who attracted me, sometimes when I had merely heard her spoken of without having seen her, my anxiety to look my best, to show myself to advantage, my cold sweats, I had only, to torture myself, to imagine the same voluptuous excitement in Albertine, as though by means of the apparatus which, after the visit of a certain practitioner who had shown some scepticism about her malady, my aunt Léonie had wished to see invented, and which would enable the doctor to undergo all the sufferings of his patient in order to understand better."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 734 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 18, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hydrotherapeutic
"If the strength of my feelings made me regard as untruthful and colourless the expressions of men who had no true happiness or sorrow in their lives, on the other hand the most insignificant lines which could, however remotely, be related either to Normandy, or to Touraine, or to hydrotherapeutic establishments, or to Léa, or to the Princesse de Guermantes, or to love, or to absence, or to infidelity, at once brought back before my yes the image of Albertine, without my having the time to turn away from it, and my tears started afresh."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 704 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word luminous
"Then my tenderness could revive anew, but, simultaneously with it, a sorrow at being parted from Albertine which made me perhaps even more wretched than I had been during the recent hours when it had been jealousy that tormented me. But the latter suddenly revived at the thought of Balbec, because of the vision which all at once reappeared (and which until then had never made me suffer and indeed appeared one of the most innocuous in my memory) of the dining-room at Balbec in the evening, with all that populace crowded together in the dark on the other side of the window, as in front of the luminous wall of an aquarium, watching the strange creatures moving around in the light but (and this I had never thought of) in its conglomeration causing the fisher-girls and other daughters of the people to brush against girls of the bourgeoisie envious of that luxury, new to Balbec, from which, if not their means, at any rate parsimony and tradition excluded their parents, girls among whom there had certainly been almost every evening Albertine whom I did not know and who doubtless used to pick up some little girl whom she would meet a few minutes later in the dark, upon the sands, or else in a deserted bathing hut at the foot of the cliff."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 702-703 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"It is indeed probable that for Albertine, even if they had been true, even if she had admitted them, her own misdeeds (whether her conscience had thought them innocent or reprehensible, whether her sensuality had found them exquisite or somewhat insipid) would not have been accompanied by that inexpressible sense of horror from which I was unable to detach them."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 697 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 16, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fragmentary
"The truth is that this woman has only raised to life by a sort of magic countless elements of tenderness existing in us already in a fragmentary state, which she has assembled, joined together, effacing every gap between them, and it is we ourselves who by giving her her features have supplied all the solid matter of the beloved object."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 679 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hawthorn
"When we speak of the "niceness" of a woman, we are doing no more perhaps than project outside ourselves the pleasure that we feel in seeing her, like children when they say: "My dear little bed, my dear little pillow, my dear little hawthorns." Which explains, incidentally, why men never say of a woman who is not unfaithful to them: "She is so nice," and say it so often of a woman by whom they are betrayed."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 670 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word diaphanous
"Either swift-moving and bent over the mythological wheel of her bicycle, strapped on rainy days inside the warrior tunic of her waterproof which moulded her breasts, her head turbaned and dressed with snakes, when she spread terror through the streets of Balbec; or else on the evenings when we had taken champagne into the woods of Chantepie, her voice provocative and altered, her face suffused with warm pallor, reddened only on the cheekbones, and when, unable to make it out in the darkness of the carriage, I drew her into the moonlight in order to see it more clearly, the face I was now trying in vain to recapture, to see again in a darkness that would never end. A little statuette on the drive to the island in the Bois, a still and plump face with coarse-grained skin at the pianola, she was thus by turns rain-soaked and swift, provoking and diaphanous, motionless and smiling, an angel of music."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 659 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word azure
"But much later, when I went back gradually, in reverse order, over the times through which I had passed before I had come to love Albertine so much, when my healed heart could detach itself without suffering from Albertine dead, then I was able to recall at length without suffering that day on which Albertine had gone shopping with Françoise instead of remaining at the Trocadéro; I recalled it with pleasure as belonging to an emotional season which I had not known until then; I recalled it at last exactly, no longer injecting it with suffering, but rather, on the contrary, as we recall certain days in summer which we found too hot while they lasted, and from which only after they have passed do we extract their unalloyed essence of pure gold and indestructible azure."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 656 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word translucent
"At last it was dark in the apartment; I stumbled against the furniture in the hall, but in the door that opened on to the staircase, in the midst of the darkness I had thought to be complete, the glazed panel was translucent and blue, with the blueness of a flower, the blueness of an insect's wing, a blueness that would have seemed to me beautiful had I not felt it to be a last glint, sharp as a steel blade, a final blow that was being dealt me, in its indefatigable cruelty, by the day."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 649 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word limpid
"How often had I crossed, on the way to fetch Albertine, how often had I retrodden, on the way back with her, the great plain of Cricqueville, sometimes in foggy weather when the swirling mists gave us the illusion of being surrounded by a vast lake, sometimes on limpid evenings when the moonlight, dematerialising the earth, making it appear from a few feet away as celestial as it is, in the daytime, in the distance only, enclosed the fields and the woods with the firmament to which it had assimilated them in the moss-agate of a universal blue!"
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 648 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word prismatic
"She left the room, then returned, but I turned sharply away under the impact of the painful discharge of one of the thousand invisible memories which incessantly exploded around me in the darkness: I had noticed that she had brought me cider and cherries, things which a farm-lad had brought out to us in the carriage, at Balbec, "kinds" in which I should have made the most perfect communion, in those days, with the prismatic gleam in shuttered dining-rooms on days of scorching heat."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 646 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fugitive
"Now this love, born first and foremost of a need to prevent Albertine from doing wrong, this love had thereafter preserved the traces of its origin. Being with her mattered little to me so long as I could prevent the fugitive creature from going to this place or to that."
abrupt reaction of pain."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 585 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fugitive
"Every woman feels that the greater her power over a man, the more impossible it is to leave him except by sudden flight: a fugitive precisely because a queen."
abrupt reaction of pain."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 571-572 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word glittering
"But this knowledge, which the shrewdest perceptions of the mind would not have given me, had now been brought to me, hard, glittering, strange, like a crystallised salt, by the abrupt reaction of pain."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 564 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 15, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word ineffable
"I rang for Françoise to ask her to buy me a guidebook and a timetable, as I had done as a boy when already I wanted to prepare in advance a journey to Venice, the fulfilment of a desire as violent as that which I felt at this moment. I forgot that in the meantime, there was a desire which I had attained without any satisfaction—the desire for Balbec—and that Venice, being also a visible phenomenon, was probably no more able than Balbec to fulfil an ineffable dream, that of the Gothic age made actual by a springtime sea, that now teased my mind from moment to moment with an enchanted, caressing, elusive, mysterious, confused image."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 558 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word calico
"Now that Albertine no longer appeared to be angry with me, the possession of her no longer seemed to me a treasure in exchange for which one is prepared to sacrifice every other. For perhaps one would have done so only to rid oneself of a grief, an anxiety, which are now appeased. One has succeeded in jumping through the calico hoop through which one thought for a moment that one would never be able to pass."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 556 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word azure
"Likewise, too, no more than the seasons to its flowerless creeks, do modern times bring any change to the Gothic city; I knew it, even if I could not imagine it, or rather, imagining it, this was what I longed for with the same desire which long ago, when I was a boy, in the very ardour of departure, had broken and robbed me of the strength to make the journey: to find myself face to face with my Venetian imaginings, to observe how that divided sea enclosed in its meanderings, like the sinuosities of the ocean stream, an urbane and refined civilisation, but one that, isolated by their azure girdle, had evolved independently, had had its own schools of painting and architecture, to admire that fabulous garden of fruits and birds in coloured stone, flowering in the midst of the sea which kept it refreshed, lapped the base of the columns with its tide, and, like a sombre azure gaze watching in the shadows, kept patches of light perpetually flickering on the bold relief of the capitals."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 556 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word vetiver
"But to me (just as an aroma, unpleasing perhaps in itself, of naphthalene and vetiver would have thrilled me by bringing back to me the blue purity of the sea on the day of my arrival at Balbec), the smell of petrol which, together with the smoke from the exhaust of the car, had so often melted into the pale azure on those scorching days when I used to drive from Saint-Jean-de-la-Haise to Gourville, since it had accompanied me on my excursions during those summer afternoons when I left Albertine painting, called into blossom now on either side of me, for all that I was lying in my darkened bedroom, corn-flowers, poppies and red clover, intoxicated me like a country scent, not circumscribed and fixed like that of the hawthorns which, held in by its dense, oleaginous elements, hangs with a certain stability about the hedge, but like a scent before which the roads sped away, the landscape changed, stately houses came hurrying to meet me, the sky turned pale, forces were increased tenfold, a scent which was like a symbol of elastic motion and power and which revived the desire that I had felt at Balbec to climb into the cage of steel and crystal, but this time no longer to pay visits to familiar houses with a woman I knew too well, but to make love in new places with a woman unknown."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 554-555 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word luminous
"In my bedroom, where on the contrary it was cooler, when the unctuous air had succeeded in glazing and isolating the smell of the wash-stand, the smell of the wardrobe, the smell of the sofa, simply by the sharpness with which they stood out, vertical and erect, in adjacent but distinct slices, in a pearly chiaroscuro which added a softer glaze to the shimmer of the curtains and the blue stain armchairs, I saw myself, not by a mere caprice of my imagination but because it was physically possible, following, in some new suburban quarter like that in which Bloch's house at Balbec was situated, the streets blinded by the sun, and finding in them not the dull butchers' shops and the white freestone facings, but the country dining-room which I could reach in no time, and the smells that I would find there on my arrival, the smell of the bowl of cherries and apricots, the smell of cider, the smell of gruyère cheese, held in suspense in the luminous coagulation of shadow which they delicately vein like the heart of an agate, while the knife-rests of prismatic glass scatter rainbows athwart the room or paint the oilcloth here and there with peacock-eyes."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 553-554 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fugitive
"But even allowing for her lies, it was incredible how spasmodic her life was, how fugitive her strongest desires. She would be mad about a person whom, three days later, she would refuse to see. She could not wait for an hour while I sent out for canvas and colours, for she wished to start painting again. For two whole days she would be impatient, almost shed the tears, quickly dried, of an infant that has just been weaned from its nurse. And this instability of her feelings with regard to people, things, occupations, arts, places, was in fact so universal that, if she did love money, which I do not believe, she cannot have loved it for longer than anything else."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 552 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fugitive
"Looking back, I find it difficult to describe how densely her life was covered in a network of alternating, fugitive, often contradictory desires. No doubt falsehood complicated this still further, for, as she retained no accurate memory of our conversations, if, for example, she had said to me: "Ah! that was a pretty girl, if you like, and a good golfer," and, when I had asked the girl's name, had answered with that detached, universal, superior air of which no doubt there is always enough and to spare, for all liars of this category borrow it for a moment when they do not wish to answer a question, and it never fails them: "Ah, I'm afraid I don't know" (with regret at her inability to enlighten me), "I never knew her name, I used to see her on the golf course, but I didn't know what she was called"—if, a month later, I said to her: "Albertine, you remember that pretty girl you mentioned to me, who used to play golf so well," "Ah, yes," she would answer without thinking, "Emilie Daltier, I don't know what's become of her." And the lie, like a line of earthworks, was carried back from the defence of the name, now captured, to the possibilities of meeting her again."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 551 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word luminosity
"But I hesitated for an instant, for the sky-blue border of her dress added to her face a beauty, a luminosity, without which she would have seemed to me harder."
birds, symbols of death and resurrection."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 538 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word azure
"I kissed her then a second time, pressing to my heart the shimmering golden azure of the Grand Canal and the mating birds, symbols of death and resurrection."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 538 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word azure
"The Fortuny gown which Albertine was wearing that evening seemed to me the tempting phantom of that invisible Venice. It was overrun by Arab ornamentation, like Venice, like the Venetian palaces hidden like sultan's wives behind a screen of perforated stone, like the bindings in the Ambrosian Library, like the columns from which the oriental birds that symbolised alternatively life and death were repeated in the shimmering fabric, of an intense blue which, as my eyes drew nearer, turned into a malleable gold by those same transmutations which, before an advancing gondola, change into gleaming metal the azure of the Grand Canal. And the sleeves were lined with a cherry pink which is so peculiarly Venetian that it is called Tiepolo pink."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 531 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word mauve
"Her throat, the curve of which, seen from my bed, was strong and full, at that distance and in the lamplight appeared pinker, less pink however than her face, bent forward in profile, which my gaze, issuing from the innermost depths of myself, charged with memories and burning with desire, invested with such a brilliancy, such an intensity of life that its relief seemed to stand out and turn with the same almost magic power as on the day, in the hotel at Balbec, when my vision was clouded by my overpowering desire to kiss her; and I prolonged each of its surfaces beyond what I was able to see and beneath what concealed it from me and made me feel all the more strongly—eyelids which half hid her eyes, hair that covered the upper part of her cheeks—the relief of those superimposed planes; her eyes (like two facets that alone have yet been polished in the matrix in which an opal is still embedded), become more resistant than metal while remaining more brilliant than light, disclosed, in the midst of the blind matter overhanging them, as it were the mauve, silken wings of a butterfly placed under glass; and her dark, curling hair, presenting different conformations whenever she turned to ask me what she was to play next, now a splendid wing, sharp at the tip, broad at the base, black, feathered and triangular, now massing the contours of its curls in a powerful and varied chain, full of crests, of watersheds, of precipices, with its soft, creamy texture, so rich and so multiple, seeming to exceed the variety that nature habitually achieves and to correspond rather to the desire of a sculpture who accumulates difficulties in order to emphasise the suppleness, the vibrancy, the fullness, the vitality of his creation, brought out more strongly, but interrupting in order to cover it, the animated curve and, as it were, the rotation of the smooth, roseate face, with its glazed matt texture as of painted wood."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 515-516 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word luminous
"But whereas in memory this vagueness may be, if not fathomed, at any rate identified, thanks to a pinpointing of circumstances which explain why a certain taste has been able to recall to us luminous sensations, the vague sensations given by Vinteuil coming not from a memory but from an impression (like that of the steeples of Martinville), one would have had to find, for the geranium scent of his music, not a material explanation, but the profound equivalent, the unknown, colourful festival (of which his works seemed to be the disconnected fragments, the scarlet-flashing splinters), the mode by which he "heard" the universe and projected it far beyond himself."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 505 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 10, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fragmentary
"She chose pieces which were either quite new or which she had played to me only once or twice, for, beginning to know me better, she was aware that I liked to fix my thoughts only upon what was still obscure to me, and to be able, in the course of these successive renderings, thanks to the increasing but, alas, distorting and alien light of my intellect, to link to one another the fragmentary and interrupted lines of the structure which at first had been almost hidden in mist."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 501 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 10, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fugitive
"It was no longer the same Albertine, because she was not, as at Balbec, incessantly in flight upon her bicycle, impossible to find owing to the number of little watering-places where she would go to spend the night with friends and where moreover her lies made it more difficult to lay hands on her; because, shut up in my house, docile and alone, she was no longer what at Balbec, even when I had succeeded in finding her, she used to be upon the beach, that fugitive, cautious, deceitful creature, whose presence was expanded by the thought of all those assignations which she was skilled in concealing, which made one love her because they made one suffer and because, beneath her coldness to other people and her casual answers, I could sense yesterday's assignation and tomorrow's, and for myself a sly, disdainful thought; because the sea breeze no longer puffed out her skirts; because, above all, I had clipped her wings, and she had ceased to be a winged Victory and become a burdensome slave of whom I would have liked to rid myself."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 500-501 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 10, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word luminous
"So that, as I raised my eyes for one last look from the outside at the window of the room in which I should presently find myself, I seemed to behold the luminous gates which were about to close behind me and of which I myself had forged, for an eternal slavery, the inflexible bars of gold."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 445 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word luminous
"The carriage drove off. I remained for a moment alone on the pavement. It was true that I endowed those luminous streaks which I could see from below, and which to anyone else would have seemed quite superficial, with the utmost plenitude, solidity, and volume, because of all the significance that I placed behind them, in a treasure unsuspected by the world which I had hidden there and from which those horizontal rays emanated, but a treasure in exchange for which I had forfeited my freedom, my solitude, my thought."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 444-445 of the Modern Library paperback edition
February 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word khedive
"The exciting new storytelling form, barely a century old, was adapted from the European novels that European armies brought in their wake: Napoleon's troops were in Cairo for three years, but, thanks to Egypt's Paris-worshipping nineteenth-century khedives, Balzac and Zola stayed for good."
-- Claudia Roth Pierpont, in "Found in Translation" in The New Yorker's January 18, 2010 issue.
January 23, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word translucent
"From his smile, a tribute to the defunct salon which he saw with his mind's eye, I understood that what Brichot, perhaps without realising it, preferred in the old drawing-room, more than the large windows, more than the gay youth of his hosts and their faithful, was that unreal aspect (which I myself could discern from certain similarities between La Raspelière and the Quai Conti) of which, in a drawing-room as in everything else, the actual, external aspect, verifiable by everyone, is but the prolongation, the aspect which has detached itself from the outer world to take refuge in our soul, to which it gives as it were a surplus-value, in which it is absorbed into its habitual substance, transforming itself—houses that have been pulled down, people long dead, bowls of fruit at suppers which we recall—into that translucent alabaster of our memories of which we are incapable of conveying the colour which we alone can see, so that we can truthfully say to other people, when speaking of the past, that they can have no conception of them, that they are unlike anything they have seen, and that we ourselves cannot inwardly contemplate without a certain emotion, reflecting that it is on the existence of our thoughts that their survival for a little longer depends, the gleam of lamps that have been extinguished and the fragrance of arbours that will never bloom again."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 379 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word orangeade
"The electric lights would have fused, the pastries would not have arrived in time, the orangeade would have given everybody a stomach-ache. She was the one person not to have here. At the mere sound of her name, as in a fairy-tale, not a note would have issued from the brass; the flute and the oboe would have suddenly lost their voices."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 367 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word voluptuous
"And no doubt they ought to have forgone the voluptuous pleasure of that sacrilege, but it did not express the whole of their natures."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 348 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"But very soon, the triumphant motif of the bells having been banished, dispersed by others, I succumbed once again to the music; and I began to realise that if, in the body of this septet, different elements presented themselves one after another to combine at the close, so also Vinteuil's sonata and, as I later discovered, his other works as well, had been no more than timid essays, exquisite but very slight, beside the triumphal and consummate masterpiece now being revealed to me."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 335 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"The cellist was hunched over the instrument which he clutched between his knees, his head bowed forward, his coarse features assuming an involuntary expression of disgust at the more mannerist moments; another leaned over his double bass, fingering it with the same domestic patience with which he might have peeled a cabbage, while by his side the harpist, a mere child in a short skirt, framed behind the diagonal rays of her golden quadrilateral, recalling those which, in the magic chamber of a sibyl, arbitrarily denote the ether according to the traditional forms, seemed to be picking out exquisite sounds here and there at designated points, just as though, a tiny allegorical goddess poised before the golden trellis of the heavenly vault, she were gathering, one by one, its stars."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 334 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word shimmering
"My joy at having rediscovered it was enhanced by the tone, so friendly and familiar, which it adopted in addressing me, so persuasive, so simple, and yet without subduing the shimmering beauty with which it glowed."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 332 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word glittering
"As when, in a stretch of country which one thinks one does not know and which in fact one has approached from a new direction, after turning a corner one finds oneself suddenly emerging on to a road every inch of which is familiar, but one had simply not been in the habit of approaching it that way, one suddenly says to oneself: "Why, this is the lane that leads to the garden gate of my friends the X----s; I'm only two minutes from their house," and there, indeed, is their daughter who has come out to greet one as one goes by; so, all of a sudden, I found myself, in the midst of this music that was new to me, right in the heart of Vinteuil's sonata; and, more marvellous than any girl, the little phrase, sheathed, harnessed in silver, glittering with brilliant sonorities, as light and soft as silken scarves, came to me, recognisable in this new guise."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 331-332 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word roseate
"Mme Verdurin sat alone, the twin hemispheres of her pale, slightly roseate brow magnificently bulging, her hair drawn back, partly in imitation of an eighteenth-century portrait, partly from the need for coolness of a feverish person reluctant to reveal her condition, aloof, a deity presiding over the musical rites, goddess of Wagnerism and sick-headaches, a sort of almost tragic Norn, conjured up by the spell of genius in the midst of all these "bores," in whose presence she would scorn even more than usual to express her feelings upon hearing a piece of music which she knew better than they."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 331 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word kakochnyk
"Does a toque really suit that enormous head of hair which a kakochnyk would set off to full advantage?"
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 294 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 20, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"Our shadows, now parallel, now close together and joined, traced an exquisite pattern at our feet."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 227 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word fragmentary
"Before that hour drew near, we had a spell of chiaroscuro, because after we had driven as far as the Seine, where Albertine admired, and by her presence prevented me from admiring, the reflexions of red sails upon the wintry blue of the water, and a tiled house nestling in the distance like a single red poppy against the clear horizon of which Saint-Cloud seemed, further off still, to be the fragmentary, friable, ribbed petrifaction, we left our motor-car and walked a long way."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 227 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word luminous
"It was definitive, for the lady had returned perhaps to Balbec, had registered perhaps, on the luminous and echoing beach, the absence of Albertine; but she was unaware that the girl was living with me, was wholly mine."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 226 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word bhadralok
"The cooking and eating of food thus became deeply implicated in the cultural politics of bhadralok nationalism."
-- from the abstract of "Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal" by Jayanta Sengupta, in Modern Asian Studies volume 44, issue 1: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X09990072
January 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word prismatic
"'All the poetry that the old quarters contain has been squeezed out to the last drop, but if you look at some of the houses that have been built lately for well-to-do tradesmen in the new districts, where the stone is all freshly cut and still to white, don't they seem to rend the torrid midday air of July, at the hour when the shopkeepers go home to lunch in the suburbs, with a cry as sharp and acidulous as the smell of the cherries waiting for the meal to begin in the darkened dining-room, where the prismatic glass knife-rests throw off a multicoloured light as beautiful as the windows of Chartres?'"
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 218 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"I had barely time to make out, being separated from them by the glass of the car as effectively as I should have been by that of my bedroom window, a young fruit-seller, or a dairymaid, standing in the doorway of her shop, illuminated by the sunshine like a heroine whom my desire was sufficient to launch upon exquisite adventures, on the threshold of a romance which I should never know."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 216 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word chrysanthemum
"Our motor-car sped along the boulevards and the avenues, whose rows of houses, a pink congelation of sunshine and cold, reminded me of my visits to Mme Swann in the soft light of her chrysanthemums, before it was time to ring for the lamps."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 216 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 11, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word exquisite
"The other musician, he who was delighting me at the moment, Wagner, retrieving some exquisite fragment from a drawer of his writing-table to introduce it, as a retrospectively necessary theme, into a work he had not even thought of at the time he composed it, then having composed a first mythological opera, and a second, and afterwards others still, and perceiving all of a sudden that he had written a tetralogy, must have felt something of the same exhilaration as Balzac when the latter, casting over his books the eye at once of a stranger and of a father, finding in one the purity of Raphael, in another the simplicity of the Gospel, suddenly decided, shedding a retrospective illumination upon them, that they would be better brought together in a cycle in which the same characters would reappear, and touched up his work with a swift brush-stroke, the last and the most sublime."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 205 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word voluptuous
"However much she tried to conceal her awareness of it, it bathed her, enveloped her, vaporous, voluptuous, made her whole face glow."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 193 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word voluptuous
"I remembered the distress that I felt when I saw her face subjected to an active scrutiny, like that of a painter preparing to make a sketch, entirely enveloped in it, and, doubtless on account of my presence, submitting to this contact without appearing to notice it, with a passivity that was perhaps clandestinely voluptuous."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 192 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word translucent
"Surrounding both myself and Albertine there had been this morning (far more than the sunny day) that environment which itself is invisible but through the translucent and changing medium of which we saw, I her actions, she the importance of her own life—that is to say those beliefs which we do not perceive but which are no more assimilable to a pure vacuum than is the air that surrounds us; composing round about us a variable atmosphere, sometimes excellent, often unbreathable, they deserve to be studied and recorded as carefully as the temperature, the barometric pressure, the season, for our days have their own singularity, physical and moral."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 191 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word flavescent
"I raised my eyes to those flavescent, frizzy locks and felt myself caught in their swirl and swept away, with a throbbing heart, amid the lightning and the blasts of a hurricane of beauty."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 185 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word limpid
"In doing so I was like Elstir, who, obliged to remain closeted in his studio, on certain days in spring when the knowledge that the woods were full of violets gave him a hunger to see some, used to send his concierge out to buy him a bunch; and then it was not the table upon which he had posed the little floral model, but the whole carpet of undergrowth where in other years he had seen, in their thousands, the serpentine stems bowed beneath the weight of their tiny blue heads, that Elstir would fancy that he had before his eyes, like an imaginary zone defined in his studio by the limpid odour of the evocative flower."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 178 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 8, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word limpid
"Besides, in the state of limpid unreason that precedes these heavy slumbers, if fragments of wisdom float there luminously, if the names of Taine and George Eliot are not unknown, the waking state remains none the less superior to the extent that it is possible to continue it every morning, but not to continue the dream life every night."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 155-156 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word transparent
"The iron shutters of the baker's shop and of the dairy, which had been lowered last night over every possibility of feminine bliss, were now being raised, like the canvas of a ship that is getting under way and about to set sail across the transparent sea, on to a vision of young shopgirls."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 144 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word translucent
"Then her sleep would seem to me a marvellous and magic world in which at certain moments there rises from the depths of the barely translucent element the avowal of a secret which we shall not understand."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 144 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 7, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word etiolated
"When Albertine came back to my room, she was wearing a black satin dress which had the effect of making her seem paler, of turning her into the pallid, intense Parisian woman, etiolated by lack of fresh air, by the atmosphere of crowds and perhaps by the practice of vice, whose eyes seemed the more uneasy because they were not brightened by any colour in her cheeks."
-- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 127-128 of the Modern Library paperback edition
January 5, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word diaphanous
"Between the two Balbec settings, so different one from the other, there was an interval of several years in Paris, the long expanse of which was dotted with all the visits that Albertine had paid me. I saw her in the different years of my life occupying, in relation to myself, different positions which made me feel the beauty of the intervening spaces, that long lapse of time during which I had remained without seeing her and in the diaphanous depths of which the roseate figure that I saw before me was carved with mysterious shadows and in bold relief. This was due also to the superimposition not merely of the successive images which Albertine had been for me, but also of the great qualities of intelligence and heart, and of the defects of character, all alike unsuspected by me, which Albertine, in a germination, a multiplication of herself, a fleshy efflorescence in sombre colours, had added to a nature that formerly could scarcely have been said to exist, but was now difficult to plumb."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 83 of the Modern Library paperback edition
December 29, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word fragmentary
"The fugitive and fragmentary pleasure, compounded of mystery and sensuality, which I had felt at Balbec, on the night when she had come to sleep at the hotel, had been completed and stabilised, filling my hitherto empty dwelling with a permanent store of domestic, almost conjugal, ease that radiated even into the passages and upon which all my senses, either actively or, when I was alone, in imagination as I awaited her return, peacefully fed."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 69 of the Modern Library paperback edition
December 29, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word luminous
"I do not say that a day will not come when, even to these luminous girls, we shall assign sharply defined characters, but that will be because they will have ceased to interest us, because their entry upon the scene will no longer be, for our heart, the apparition which it expected to be different and which, each time, leaves it overwhelmed by fresh incarnations."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 79 of the Modern Library paperback edition
December 29, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word roseate
"We have been told that some pretty girl is tender, loving, full of the most delicate feelings. Our imagination accepts this assurance, and when we behold for the first time, beneath the woven girdle of her golden hair, the rosy disc of her face, we are almost afraid that this too virtuous sister, cooling our ardour by her very virtue, can never be to us the lover for whom we have been longing. What secrets, however, we confide to her from the first moment, on the strength of that nobility of heart, what plans we make together! But a few days later, we regret that we were so confiding, for the rosy-cheeked girl, at our second meeting, addresses us in the language of a lascivious Fury. As for the successive facets which after pulsating for some days the roseate light, now eclipsed, presents to us, it is not even certain that a momentum external to these girls has not modified their aspect, and this might well have happened with my band of girls at Balbec."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 77-78 of the Modern Library paperback edition
December 29, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word syringa
"On this particular evening, Mme de Guermantes had given me, knowing that I was fond of them, some branches of syringa which had been sent to her from the South. When I left her and went upstairs to our flat, Albertine had already returned, and on the staircase I ran into Andrée, who seemed to be distressed by the powerful smell of the flowers that I was bringing home."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 63-64 of the Modern Library paperback edition
December 29, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word vermilion
"I wanted to know the original spelling of the name Jean. I learned it when I received a letter from a nephew of Mme de Villeparisis who signs himself—as he was christened, as he figures in the Almanach de Gotha—Jehan de Villeparisis, with the same handsome, superfluous, heraldic h that we admire, illuminated in vermilion or ultramarine, in a Book of Hours or in a stained-glass window."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 39 of the Modern Library paperback edition
December 25, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word batten
I had no recollection of having looked this word up before, but apparently I did! Yet again I encountered it in the sense of "fatten" and was surprised. In The Captive by Proust: "Then, like a famished convalescent already battening upon all the dishes that are still forbidden him ..."
December 25, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word transparent
"The sun's rays fell upon my bed and passed through the transparent shell of my attenuated body, warmed me, made me glow like crystal."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 25 of the Modern Library paperback edition
December 25, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word hoar-frost
yarb, excellent! I started The Captive in September but didn't get very far, then kept getting distracted by library books. Now I'm on vacation, which means lots of reading time.
December 25, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word hoar-frost
"The windows of our respective bathrooms, so that their occupants might not be visible from without, were not smooth and transparent but crinkled with an artificial and transparent hoar-frost. All of a sudden, the sun would colour this muslin glass, gild it, and, gently disclosing in my person an earlier young man whom habit had long concealed, would intoxicate me with memories, as though I were in the heart of the country amidst golden foliage in which even a bird was not lacking."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 3 of the Modern Library paperback edition
December 23, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word spagyrical
"Fifty years before, the glassmaking priest and alchemist Antonio Neri had been enticed into the Antwerp house of the Portuguese nobleman Emanuel Zimines and persuaded to write out his spagyrical secrets in a book published in Florence in 1612 called The Art of Glass."
Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott, p 68
December 14, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word pyracanthas
"Virginia Woolf had once described the riverbanks as being on fire on either side of the Cam, but there was no such fire here now. Or at least not yet. There was red—rowan berries, rose hips, pyracanthas—but the red sat against the astonishing palette of autumn green like the sparks of a newly lit fire, like drops of crimson blood in the hedgerows."
Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott, p 109
December 14, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word brasill
"OK. How did he make red?" Was she laughing at me?
"Can't quite remember. Yes, I can." Blurred words came into focus. "Sheep's blood drained into a bladder, hung out to dry in the sun to make a powder, then mixed with alum water when needed. There was another one in which you boil brasill, whatever that is, and then he writes that if you would have it a 'sad red,' mingle it with potash water; if a light red, temper it with white lead. Christ, I've only read the transcription of that notebook once and I remember it all. What do you think a 'sad red' is?"
Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott, p 110
December 14, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word savin
"There are words for trees that shelter these birds—
low laurels, others that are called liquid-
ambars, cedars, savins, and evergreen oaks—"
from "Stranging" by David Baker, in Never-Ending Birds
November 28, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word trillium
See also: trillium flexipes: "nodding wakerobin" is such a good name!
November 27, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word epiphenomenal
"My epiphenomenal faces retract, and no longer a metal dancer at the hub of a wheel, I take a step, diminish in size, stumble, stoop, fumble on the floor for my robe, laugh a silly laugh, thoroughly un-tranced."
Forgetting Elena by Edmund White, p 130 of the Vintage International paperback edition
November 21, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word pastille
"Two, three, four paces down the hall, past a pastille burner, and Billy steers me to the left into a blue-tiled bathroom."
Forgetting Elena by Edmund White, p 122 of the Vintage International paperback edition
November 21, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word phthisic
"His hand pumps mine, his a meaty, insensitive hand, the exact opposite of the Hand's phthisic arm which only now releases me."
Forgetting Elena by Edmund White, p 105 of the Vintage International paperback edition
November 21, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word chinaberry
"A final flight, short and narrow, as though it were the last resistance to gravity the structure could come up with, passes through glass doors to an open balcony overlooking a charming old garden of chinaberries and variegated mosses and birches peeling in papery white tatters around a pool that undoubtedly spells out a word like heart or mind but has been allowed to revert so thoroughly to nature that its letters, like the snow-weathered features of a marble bust, have lapsed into incoherence."
Forgetting Elena by Edmund White, p 69 of the Vintage International paperback edition
November 20, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word fantod
"Just thinking about that place now gives me the howling fantods."
The Magicians by Lev Grossman, p 397
October 14, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word aeruginous
"From the uptown end he could just barely see the tiny, hazy, aeruginous spike of the Statue of Liberty out in the bay."
The Magicians by Lev Grossman, pp 394-395
October 14, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word poniard
"Too many things were happening at once. Quentin's stomach clenched when he realized an elf had singled Alice out and was advancing across the dry basin toward her, twirling a long straight knife—were they called poniards?—in each hand."
The Magicians by Lev Grossman, p 328
October 14, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word viognier
"Magic," Richard announced slowly, flushed, "is the tools. Of the Maker." He almost never drank, and two glasses of viognier had put him well over his limit. He looked first left and then right to make sure the whole table was listening. What a fatuous ass."
The Magicians by Lev Grossman, p 233
October 13, 2009
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