Also reading this (Tea lent me his copy). So good. It's a bit like caviar I think - I want to savour it, not just ram it down.
(Not that I've ever had caviar but that's what I imagine it's like).
what are you reading now?
(Not that I've ever had caviar but that's what I imagine it's like).
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Ah! I've been meaning to ask you how you were getting on with this. It's fucking great, isn't it?
this is always my problem w/ short story collections is i only want to read one story at a time and then it takes me forever to get through one and i abandon it halfway through. labyrinths is amazing that way though, reading 5 pages feels like 50 (in a good way).
what are your favorites so far? i think about funes the memorious all the time, and the library of babel ofc.
william kent
Well-known member
The House of Asterion, The Immortal and The Three Versions of Judas were my favs. from Labyrinths.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Isn't it the Zahir or am I getting mixed up?
william kent
Well-known member
We did. I copied and pasted what I said last time.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh you might be right, can't remember.
william kent
Well-known member
Another of my favourites is a really short one from Dreamtigers called Paradiso, XXXI, 108.
Diodorus Siculus tells the story of a god, broken and scattered abroad. What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?
Mankind has lost a face, an irretrievable face, and all have longed to be that pilgrim — imagined in the Empyrean, beneath the Rose — who in Rome sees the Veronica and murmurs in faith, “Lord Jesus, my God, true God, is this then what Thy face was like?”
Beside a road there is a stone face and an inscription that says, “The True Portrait of the Holy Face of the God of Jaen.” If we truly knew what it was like, the key to the parables would be ours and we would know whether the son of the carpenter was also the Son of God.
Paul saw it as a light that struck him to the ground; John, as the sun when it shines in all its strength; Teresa de Jesus saw it many times, bathed in tranquil light, yet she was never sure of the color of His eyes.
We lost those features, as one may lose a magic number made up of the usual ciphers, as one loses an image in a kaleidoscope, forever. We may see them and know them not. The profile of a Jew in the subway is perhaps the profile of Christ; perhaps the hands that give us our change at a ticket window duplicate the ones some soldier nailed one day to the cross.
Perhaps a feature of the crucified face lurks in every mirror; perhaps the face died, was erased, so that God may be all of us.
Who knows but that tonight we may see it in the labyrinth of dreams, and tomorrow not know we saw it.
Diodorus Siculus tells the story of a god, broken and scattered abroad. What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?
Mankind has lost a face, an irretrievable face, and all have longed to be that pilgrim — imagined in the Empyrean, beneath the Rose — who in Rome sees the Veronica and murmurs in faith, “Lord Jesus, my God, true God, is this then what Thy face was like?”
Beside a road there is a stone face and an inscription that says, “The True Portrait of the Holy Face of the God of Jaen.” If we truly knew what it was like, the key to the parables would be ours and we would know whether the son of the carpenter was also the Son of God.
Paul saw it as a light that struck him to the ground; John, as the sun when it shines in all its strength; Teresa de Jesus saw it many times, bathed in tranquil light, yet she was never sure of the color of His eyes.
We lost those features, as one may lose a magic number made up of the usual ciphers, as one loses an image in a kaleidoscope, forever. We may see them and know them not. The profile of a Jew in the subway is perhaps the profile of Christ; perhaps the hands that give us our change at a ticket window duplicate the ones some soldier nailed one day to the cross.
Perhaps a feature of the crucified face lurks in every mirror; perhaps the face died, was erased, so that God may be all of us.
Who knows but that tonight we may see it in the labyrinth of dreams, and tomorrow not know we saw it.
william kent
Well-known member
I'm reading The Big Nowhere.
william kent
Well-known member
It's my second Ellroy after The Black Dahlia and I think it's better already.
william kent
Well-known member
He's a nice antidote to the style of writing I was moaning about earlier. Not many associative lists in Ellroy. If there's a list, it's usually straight to the point.
"Deluded.
Traitorous.
Perverse."
"Deluded.
Traitorous.
Perverse."
william kent
Well-known member
One of the first things I noticed with this one is literally everyone's corrupt, even the guys who refuse to do certain things because they aren't "right" are bribing people, beating the shit out of drug dealers etc.