Excerpts of excellence

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orpheus
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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by orpheus » Mon Jul 22, 2013 6:35 am

"Each of us is the forward point of a procession stretching back into the darkness. And even within oneself, every moment is a self that dies: the road to each day's midnight is littered with corpses and all of them whispering. As I write this I'm listening to Beethoven's F Major Quartet, Opus 59, No. 1, the first Razumovsky, while thousands of my dead selves hum along with it, sometimes weeping for times that are gone."

—Russell Hoban, Fremder

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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by FBM » Mon Jul 22, 2013 6:41 am

Mmmm. Nice. :eddy:
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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by orpheus » Mon Jul 22, 2013 6:42 am

"I went down to the kitchen and made myself a sardine sandwich. While I ate it I leafed through Personal Computer World looking at the various ads for hardware and software. There were so many software packages for spreadsheets and databases and computer adventure games, why couldn't there be one called Third Novel?"

—Russell Hoban, The Medusa Frequency

-also-

"I am the first of your line. I am the first singer, the one who invented the lyre, the one to whom Hermes brought Eurydice and perpetual guilt. I am your progenitor, I am the endlessly voyaging sorrow that is always in you, I am that astonishment from which you write in those brief moments when you can write."

—The head of Orpheus speaking (also in Hoban's The Medusa Frequency)

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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by orpheus » Mon Jul 22, 2013 6:53 am

"I went to see if she was still asleep. She wasn't in my bed. She wasn't in the studio or on the balcony. She wasn't in the bathroom or the kitchen. She was nowhere in the house. The night was gone, the day was here; the tube trains were running and the trees on the common were swaying in the cool of a morning that was going to turn hot very soon. Some birds were twittering in a half-hearted way, as if they were working to rule. At that time of day I always have the feeling that if you gave reality a good kick, the scenery would shake."

—Russell Hoban, Amaryllis Night and Day

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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by orpheus » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:01 am

"There is a north in the mind where the white wind blows, where the white ones live. Where the ice bear walks alone, the ice bear swinging his head on his thick neck that is like a great white snake in the body of a bear. Where the white wolf comes trotting, trotting on the paths of the living, the paths of the dead. Where the snowy owl glides in silence through the twilight. Where the raven speaks its word of black. The north where one goes in fear, the north that the compass cannot find, the north that is the cold and implacable truth from which one doesn't always return.
[...]
You see? says the north. I put on these shapes and I do what I do.
You're far away, I say. I'll never go to the north.
Everything has its north, says the north. I'll come to you."

—Russell Hoban, North, from his collection The Moment Under the Moment

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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by charlou » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:02 am

"I always have the feeling that if you gave reality a good kick, the scenery would shake."

hayeah, good line.
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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by orpheus » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:04 am

"I exist, said the mirror.
What about me? said Kleinzeit.
Not my problem, said the mirror."


—Russell Hoban, Kleinzeit

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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by orpheus » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:19 am

"And those of us who think about the empty spaces tend to paint pictures, write books, or compose music. There are many talented people who never will become painters, writers, or composers; the talent is in them but not the empty spaces where art happens."

– Russell Hoban, Amaryllis Night and Day

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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by pErvinalia » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:20 am

Oh, good thread! I'm glad I found it. I've always wanted to quote large chunks of Henry David Thoreau, as I find some of the passages fascinating. But all my book are up at the farm, so can't quote anything at the moment. Just bookmarking now.
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orpheus
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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by orpheus » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:25 am

RiverF wrote:"I always have the feeling that if you gave reality a good kick, the scenery would shake."

hayeah, good line.
Glad you like it. I think Hoban was one of the best writers we had. His death a few years ago was a tremendous loss.

Another quote you might enjoy, also from Amaryllis Night and Day

"The only world we know is the picture-show the cerebral cortex puts together from sensory data. Whether there’s anything else nobody can say. Vermeer listened to the ticking of the world and painted a series of magically arrested moments that argue reality. Still, if reality had a stage door I’d hang around there to see what comes out after the show."

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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by charlou » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:32 am

orpheus wrote:"And those of us who think about the empty spaces tend to paint pictures, write books, or compose music. There are many talented people who never will become painters, writers, or composers; the talent is in them but not the empty spaces where art happens."

– Russell Hoban, Amaryllis Night and Day
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charlou
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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by charlou » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:33 am

*googles Vermeer*
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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by charlou » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:36 am

Ayep ... dutch painter. :)
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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by Hermit » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:39 am

:whisper: Girl with a Pearl Earring
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

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orpheus
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Re: Excerpts of excellence

Post by orpheus » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:43 am

RiverF wrote:*googles Vermeer*
I've spent a lot of time in museums googling at the Vermeers. :)

That's one of the great things about Russ Hoban's novels: they're peppered with references to artists, music, books, films, mythology, etc. And it's not off-putting at all; he does it in such a way that one feels "oh, this is something magical", and makes a note to follow up on it. One can get a pretty good cultural education just from following the trails of breadcrumbs he leaves in his novels. At least that's what I've done, and it's been (and continues to be) a joy.

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