Model Home

The best parts of Model Home, by Eric Puchner:

“They had lost this feeling, the way you might lose a favorite gift you were no longer attached to. It had not seemed an important loss at the time: Dustin was born, and if anything a deeper,more devout-seeming love took its place. Once, while they were bathing Dustin together in the sink of their apartment, washing his scabbed-up bellybutton and tiny, heartbreaking penis, Camille had turned to Warren with a look of such stunning affection that he had actually lost his breath. I will never be happier than I am now, Warren had thought. Seventeen years later, he realized how sadly prescient that was.”

“[The guy in the top hat] sprayed some PAM into a plastic bag and then stuffed it up to his face. He blinked his eyes wide when he was finished, like something hatching from an egg.”

“The place gave Lyle a sludgy, unreal feeling, as though she were watching soap operas on a beautiful day.”

“He looked like one of those football players whose popularity hinged on their willingness to eat strange things.”

“The fact that you could know someone almost intimately and then a year later not know him at all seemed to be at the heart of everything sad and fucked up in the world.”

Painting as a Pastime by Winston Churchill

The best parts of Winston Churchill’s Painting as a Pastime*:

On libraries:
“As you browse about, taking down book after book from the shelves and contemplating the vast, infinitely varied store of knowledge and wisdom which the human race has accumulated and preserved, pride, even in its most innocent forms, is chased from the heart by feelings of awe not untinged with sadness. As on surves the mighty array of sages, saints, historians, scientists, poets and philosophers whose treaures ne will never be able to admire — still less enjoy — the brief tenure of our existence here dominates mind and spirit.”

“It is a mistake to read too many good books when quite young… The first impression is the one that counts; and if it is a slight one, it may be all that can be hoped for.”

“The boy learns enough Latin to detest it; enough Greek to pass an examination; enough French to get from Calais to Paris; enough German to exhibit a diploma; enough Spanish or Italian to tell which is which; but not enough of any to secure the enormous boon of access to a second literature.”

“Just to paint is great fun. The colours are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out. Matching them, however crudely, with what you see is fascinating and absolutely absorbing. Try it if you have not done so — before you die.”

“One begins to see, for instance, that painting a picture is like fighting a battle; and trying to paint a picture is, I suppose, like trying to fight a battle. It is, if anything, more exciting than fighting it successfully.”

An Object of Beauty

The best parts of Object of Beauty by Steve Martin:

“Lacey was just as happy alone as with company. When she was lone, she was potential; with others she was realized.”

“… a young man, Jamaican, perhaps, his head circled in a scarf with sunbleached dreadlocks on piled on top, looking like a plate of softshell crabs.”

“He brought the Van Gogh out to the offices, where ambient sunlight would make any flaws in the drawing more visible. He hovered around Lacey’s desk, tilting it this way and that, looking for fading, looking for foxing. Lacey presumed he didn’t notice her, but when he said, “A beautiful thing… a beautiful thing,” Lacey, at her desk, said, “I do my best.”

“Auctions were, and still are, spectator sports, where the contestants are money.”

“Lacey squeezed back into her slot across from [Jonah], with Patrice having to turn sideways to sit down. She seemed genuinely in love with Patrice, and genuinely trying to rekindle Jonah’s fleeting interest of three years ago. Looking back, I think that both behaviors were valid. To her this was natural, to Patrice it was unsettling, to me it was bewildering, and to Tanya Ross, who had matured normally, it was creepy.”

Vocabulary

malfeasant – one guilty of malfeasance, an offender
incised – cut into a surface; engraved
prestidigitation – sleight of hand
feint – a movement made in order to deceive an adversary
vitrines – a glass display case or cabinet for works of art, curios, etc.
ovoid – egg shaped
argot – a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations

You Lost Me There

Mr. Baldwin is in San Francisco doing a reading tonight at the Ferry Building (6 p.m.). I hear his approximation of a Maine accent is without parallel.

The best parts of You Lost Me There:

“I tried playing housewife for a year to an empty house.”

“Russell squeezed my arm and gave me a light hug. While he strode toward the airport, compact and hustling, his suit bag like a shadow on his back, I thought, I don’t care if I ever see him again.”

“Sara always said it was a hindrance of mine, that I expected people to tell me what they needed.”

“After the coffee he was still focused on how she liked it, how she took it, he put it, going into details to show off his good fortune for discovering a woman who didn’t mind facing away from him during sex.”

“She longed for honor. For Eagle Scouts.”

“I won’t have a normal relationship. That’s not who I am.”
“Of course not.”
“I won’t be dragged down to what other people do.”

“You’ll have worked tremendously hard to build your life after a certain fashion, and then suddenly, one morning, you want something different. You want anything but what you have, you want it new, and you want it just right then. It’s terrifying, the desire’s so powerful, you’re just sick with it.”

The Bell Jar

I’m just now reading this. Favorite parts of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

“She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.”

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

The Clock Without a Face: Numbers 8, 5, 2, 9, 10, and 7

A peek at more of the numbers folks have found from The Clock Without a Face, McSweeney’s rtreasure hunt book. They’re gorgeous:

Christina Wagner, a high school senior in Wisconsin, found the eight:

Nadine Cox was part of a team that found the five in Ohio:

The two is my favorite so far. Lauren and Jim found it in Florida:

The nine was found in Texas:

Martin Morales and his fiance Lisa found the ten in Connecticut:

Michelle Senderhauf found the seven in Indiana:

The eleven, four, and three have already been found, so that just leaves six and twelve. Covet.

Rumpus Book Club: Unreleased Books to Your Door

I just came across a genius last-minute Father’s Day Gift. My friend Stephen runs The Rumpus, an online culture and lit magazine with a genius book club concept. Here’s how it works:

“Every month you get a book in the mail that hasn’t been released yet. You’re invited to a moderated online discussion with the author at the end of the month… You can also write a review of the book and we’ll run the best written review(s) on the website.

It’s neat because we’re going to have a discussion about new books, rather than waiting to be told what books are approved for cultural consumption.”

Such a cool concept, and you can subscribe by the month or the year. Yes to books.

The Clock Without a Face

Before Hank was born, I did a lot of work with 826 Valencia, Dave Eggers’s tutoring center. In my time there, I became friends with some of the McSweeney’s folks, who always work hard to make magical things. Their latest project is so, so cool:

The Clock Without a Face, is a children’s board book about a clock with jeweled numbers. The numbers are stolen, and each page provides clues to where they’re buried.

The brilliant part? The numbers are real. Here’s what the site has to say:

“We’ve buried 12 emerald-studded numbers—each handmade and one of a kind—in 12 holes across the United States. These treasures will belong to whoever digs them up first. The question: Where to dig? The only path to the answer: Solve the riddles of The Clock Without a Face!”

McSweeney’s had the numbers made by a jeweler, and then made a real-life treasure hunt for their readers by burying them all over the U.S. Can you imagine how much work went into this?

Anyway, the hunt is already on, and the main character, Gus Twintig, has a Twitter account. I’ll keep you posted as people find the numbers (go look for the numbers, my nerdling friends!), but in the meantime you should get yourself a copy. McSweeny’s never prints too many books, and this one is a keeper.

Good work, McSweeney’s. You guys are dreamy.

The Moronic Inferno

I’ve read a lot of Martin Amis. I find his fiction off putting, but I keep reading because his work makes me want to take another pass at everything I write. The Moronic Inferno is a collection of his non-fiction essays, which I recommend. These are the parts I wanted to remember:

“Terrible things happen all the time. This is the terrible thing.”

“What’s the difference between $75 million and $150 million? Hardly any difference, surely, in our terms. But in the life of pure money $75 million and $150 million are chalk and cheese. What’s the difference? The difference is $75 million.”

of Truman Capote:
“‘The name’s Tony, isn’t it?’ he croaked.
‘No. Martin,’ I said, trying to make Martin sound quite like Tony.”

“From the point of view of ostentation — well, the house had a monogrammed marble driveway, and went on from there.”

“Miss Didion’s style relishes emphasis, repetition, re-emphasis. Her style likes looking at the same things from different angles. Her style likes starting and ending successive sentences with identical phrases.”

“Hef took the stage. For a man who never goes out, who rises at mid-afternoon, who wanders his draped mansion in slippers and robe (whose lifestyle, on paper, resembles nothing so much as a study in terminal depression)< Hef looks good — surprisingly, even scandalously so."

"Many times in Bellow's novels, we are reminding that 'being human' isn't the automatic condition of every human being."

Vocabulary

amour propre
Respect for oneself; self-esteem.

beau monde
the world of fashion and society

squib
a short and witty or sarcastic saying or writing.

obsequy
a funeral rite or ceremony

traduce
to speak maliciously and falsely of; slander; defame:

blancmange
a sweet pudding prepared with almond milk and gelatin and flavored with rum or kirsch.

etiolate
to cause (a plant) to whiten or grow pale by excluding light: to etiolate celery.

quango
a semi-public advisory and administrative body supported by the government and having most of its members appointed by the government.

imposture
the action or practice of imposing fraudulently upon others.

voluptuary
a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit and enjoyment of luxury and sensual pleasure.

argot
a specialized idiomatic vocabulary peculiar to a particular class or group of people, esp. that of an underworld group, devised for private communication and identification: a Restoration play rich in thieves’ argot.

Troilism (sometimes spelled triolism)
refers to the erotic interest in watching one’s romantic partner engage in sexual behavior with a third party, sometimes while hidden

bumf
Printed matter, such as pamphlets, forms, or memorandums, especially of an official nature and deemed of little interest or importance.

Five Favorite Books

http://blip.tv/play/g4p8gY66UJDiFw

I’m a little late posting this Momversation about finding time to read. Shortly after Hank was born, I realized that reading is my meditation. I get mean if I don’t get book time.

If you’d like to see more books I recommend, have a look at my Eight Books that Changed Things for Me post. The comments on that post are great too. If you haven’t yet, list your favorites here. I’m always looking for good reads.