It’s obvious from John Darnielle’s songs with The Mountain Goats that he’s a poet who happens to use music as a vehicle for his poems. It turns out he’s a talented novelist as well. Darnielle's debut, Wolf in White Van (rightfully shortlisted for the National Book Award), tells the intertwined stories of a snail-mail game designer whose game is taken tragically literally and, in reverse, the story of his life leading inexorably back to his disfigurement at 17. Heartbreaking, poetic and occasionally terrifying.
WORK
Nurses and doctors come and go, and family. It’s like they’re visiting a person at his lonely outpost on the space station, miles above the earth. How do they get there—just coming in through the door like that? In the brief moment between infinite communion with the ceiling and the beginning of whatever conversation they’ve come to strike up, it seems like the deepest mystery in the world. And then they break the spell, and the world contracts, palpably shifts from one reality into a new and much more unpleasant one, in which there is pain, and suffering, and people who when they are hurt stay hurt for a long time or sometimes forever, if there is such a thing as forever. Forever is a question you start asking when you look at the ceiling. It becomes a word you hear in the same way that people who associate sound with color might hear a flat sky-blue. The open sky through which forgotten satellites travel. Forever.
—John Darnielle
—from Wolf in White Van
Bonus: the title of Darnielle’s novel comes from what Larry Norman’s 70’s Christian folk-track “Six Sixty Six” seems to say when played backward. Hear this—and many more examples–on the music reversals database page.
WORD(S)
impavid. adjective. Fearless, brave. From Latin im (not) + pavidus (fearful).
“…by holding the smouldering feather of a vulture under a baby’s nose you render the child valiant and brave like a vulture, and if you do the same with a peacock’s feather, your offspring will be, like a peacock, impavid and never dismayed by thunder or other terrible noises.” (James Frazer)
“…Impavid as the Horatian model-man.” (G. A. Lawerence)
“Thou art beautiful, thou art strong, an impavid colossus…” (Brazilian National Anthem)
WEB
-
“50 Cultural Icons on Their Favorite Books”. A few of these made me love harder. Hat-tip: Reader C.
-
“Whose soul is stamped on a work of art? On a tool? On a scientific specimen? What does it mean if we conflate realness with human essence?” → “Museum 2.0: Is it Real? Artwork, Authenticity…and Cognitive Science”
-
The In Vitro Meat Cookbook: Recipes as Design Fiction. The recipe for this book: start with an ingredient that doesn’t exist.
-
Browse most of the Slim Gaillard Vout-O-Reenee Dictionary of Gaillard’s invented “Vout” language. Which comes in handy when ►listening to this talented pianist, singer and showman.
-
October 10 is the National Day of the Republic of China (Taiwan), AKA Double Ten Day, commemorating the start of the 1911 Wuchang Uprising which led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and establishment of the Republic of China. Given recent events in Hong Kong and the much higher likelihood of government concessions to Taiwan’s pro-democracy activists, this year’s celebrations should be interesting…and tense.
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
-
Reader B. writes about yesterday’s issue: “Nabokov, Poe, an intro to Jade Bos, all wrapped in a Pink Floyd bow. Another winner!”
-
Reader T. expands on yesterday’s WORD: “Your word of the day reminds me of another use of ‘azure’ related to Lolita by way of Stanley Kubrick: Alex’s response to Mr. Deltoid in A Clockwork Orange: ”As an unmuddied lake, sir. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer."
-
Reader M., hookers and cake: “I bought the Kindle version of Hookers or Cake. I’ve included a screenshot of one page for your perusal. Enjoy. Book is weird.”
I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.
And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.