This was another week spent mostly at the National Archives, so my reading was once again a bit limited. Keep those submissions coming, friends—I have to actually start writing the thesis now so my reading time will be a bit curtailed.
The study of phantoms is at the same stage as previously reported.
September 1945 report on the Quartz Program in Brazil, Record Group 57 (US Geological Survey), Records Concerning the Quartz Commodity Program in Brazil, 1944–1945, Box 2.
This sentence is about studying a real type of quartz crystal growth. In the August 1945 report on the quartz program the phantom study is described in this runner-up of a sentence:
The study of phantoms has been completed but the accompanying remarks and drawings are not in shape for final submission.
I did have the pleasure of getting to see the final phantom drawings in the archives. They are quite elegant.
But higher up, native plants thrived: Pacific cordgrass grew as tall as teenagers, interspersed with beds of rosy-fingered pickleweed.
How Far The Light Reaches: A Life In Ten Sea Creatures, Sabrina Imbler
As tall as teenagers paired with a shoutout to Homer's rosy-fingered phrasing is really pristine. Many of Imbler's other perfect sentences in this collection of essays are terrific descriptions of sea life:
When the octopus held herself close in this way, she was around the size of a personal pizza.
(A personal pizza! An octopus! I love it)
They make sharks look laughably modern, all sleek lines and aerodynamic contouring and unfeeling marble faces.
(a description of sturgeon by way of dissing sharks)
Its jaws are magnificent, sprouting from the head like elk antlers with serrated edges.
(A description of the sand striker)
But Imbler also has some just terrific gut punch sentences:
It was summer break, and I had nothing better to do than starve myself.
Now is the best day of our lives, until we come back.
This one is about cuttlefish, but also something else:
When you are not fleeing, what will you become?
I'm in the backseat of my body
"Stay Down", boygenius
Look, I'm late to this band and I'm sorry but this is a very good succinct description of dissociation.
A dour economist with ramrod-straight posture, he spoke forcefully and slowly, in a thick German accent bordering on farcical, as if every word were among the most meaningful uttered in history.
Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World, Peter S. Goodman
This sentence is a description of Peter Schwab, the creator of the World Economic Forum. I learned in this book that Schwab expects to someday win a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, which is haunting.
The beginning of this book has a lot more perfect sentences, in part because that's the part where Goodman talks about the circus of the World Economic Forum and there's more room to have fun than in the more grim reportage.
I'm not sure how Goodman could write such a detailed overview of rapacious capitalism hollowing out social safety nets and fomenting fascism and come to the conclusion that the task is merely going back to the good kind of capitalism, but I suppose one doesn't get this kind of access to billionaires by proposing full revolution. Some other highlights:
Indeed, for most participants, much of the Davos experience consisted of not really grasping what the hell was going on, while nursing the sense that more interesting things were surely happening to more connected people somewhere else.
(Good to know Davos is a lot like every big tech event I've ever been to!)
A compact though oddly charmless village, Davos sat in a valley surrounded by arresting peaks.
(A little harsh to call it "charmless" but overall a good eerie sentence that suggests setting an A24 horror movie at the World Economic Forum.)
The tension between self-celebration and self-doubt engenders a kind of social electricity.
(This one is actually not by Goodman but Goodman quoting Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker.)