James Stephens on books

James Stephens, an Irish contemporary of James Joyce, largely forgotten today, wrote one of my three favorite books, The Crock of Gold -- a tale like no other I've ever read: by turns humorous, philosophical and poetic, whose premise is what happens when the leprechauns of Gort na Cloca Mora exact revenge for having their pot of gold stolen. 

So it seems incumbent upon me to share a couple of quotes from the man.

“He saw a square room furnished as a library. The entire section of the walls which he could spy was covered from floor to ceiling with books. There were volumes of every size, every shape, every colour. There were long, narrow books that held themselves like grenadiers at stiff attention. There were short, fat books that stood solidly like aldermen who were going to make speeches and were ashamed but not frightened. 

There were mediocre books bearing themselves with the carelessness of folk who are never looked at and have consequently no shyness. There were solemn books that seemed to be feeling for their spectacles; and there were tattered, important books that had got dirty because they took snuff, and were tattered because they had been crossed in love and had never married afterwards. There were prim, ancient tomes that were certainly ashamed of their heroines and utterly unable to obtain a divorce from the hussies; and there were lean, rakish volumes that leaned carelessly, or perhaps it was with studied elegance, against their neighbours, murmuring in affected tones, "All heroines are charming to us.

--The Demi-Gods

Review: Dinner with King Tut

 

Dinner with King Tut is a strange sort of beast: let’s call it an anti-sphinx. Like the sphinx it’s composed of three dissimilar parts—not the face of a woman, the wings of a bird and the haunches of a lion, but science, fiction (but not science fiction) and DIY—where DIY involves the author learning how to knap stones, how to tattoo himself, to style hair like an ancient Roman matron, bake bread for Egyptian pyramid builders, and operate a trebuchet, among other skills once necessary for a precarious survival in different eras at different points on the globe. Also: tanning and trepanning.

And this sphinx not only poses riddles it tries its best to answer them, through the discipline of experimental archaeology. Which, if you (like me) have never heard of this field, you’re in for a series of fascinating discoveries, from a Turkish city where one’s relatives where buried beneath one’s bed to the unusual height of Chinese eunuchs.

Ozempic and the Seven Deady Sins

 This will not be an ad for Ozempic. Nor will it be a jeremiad against the drug. My cardiologist told me a story about GLP-1 and the gila monster. (Yes at a certain age, you suddenly have a "my cardiologist.” Mine is a grandfatherly story-spinner.) Three to four extensive meals in spring are claimed to supply a gila monster with enough energy for a whole season. Scientists wondered why, which is what scientists do. What they also do is investigate.

.What they found was a hormone in the venom of that gila monster that stimulates the production of insulin—similar to a hormone naturally produced by humans, with the jaw-breaking name of glucagon-like peptide-1, which is sensibly abbreviated to GLP-1, (and I’ll leave to you to wonder whether there’s such a thing as GLP-2 or GLP-3). At any rate, other scientists were able to synthesize this hormone and patent it, and then marketers were able to come up with ten thousand names for this wonder drug. I personally am prescribed with Monjauro, which I’m constantly confusing with a local Italian restaurant named Monjuni’s.

Conversation with a comic strip

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

--Michelangelo Buonarroti

I came across this comic strip the other night in my Memories feed on Facebook. It was originally posted by a friend nine years ago. I obviously didn't pay it much attention (and attention is today's coin of the realm), because I gave it a like, but didn't bother to comment.

Consider this reparation. This time I pulled up short and gave the strip careful consideration. What was different? You never step into the same stream twice and all that jazz. I'm late to the party (as usual) on this strip, which is from 2013, and I'm way late on its creator, who's been kicking it at the inkstand since 2001.

I've seen numerous strips by the same cartoonist, the monochromatic stick figures holding a four-panel conversations, more often than not with no attribution, thrown upon the world like orphans at the church door. His name is Tom Gauld. I googled him. He's a Scottish cartoonist, illustrator, and writer of graphic novels. (Is writer the right word? Composer? Creator? Confabulator?) If Schulz's preoccupation was preternaturally adult kids and Gary Larsen's was barnyard animals, Gauld's seems to be writers and books, which seems fitting in this age of meta (and of Meta).

But which is right, Gauld or Michelangelo? Is writing a process of decision, or discovery?