Whirr: 07/01/2001 - 07/31/2001

Even more Day painters: Alessandro Magnasco & [William] Hogarth (more Hogarth) (p 337).

More Day words: cuirassiers (photos) (p. 324), davits (photos) (p. 324).

Day people & places & things: the Merrimac. painters: Salvator Rosa, Francesco Guardi (paintings), Monsu Desiderio (in Spanish -- Translation through here) (paintings).

Janvier's "Sargasso Sea" (about the Sargasso Sea.) Viz the LOA endnote: "Journalist and author Thomas Allibone Janvier, In the Sargasso Sea." (Our library has it, sort of.)

Day words: Shakos (photos) (p. 241), dolmans (photo) (p. 241), sabertache (photos) (p. 241), lupines (photos) (p. 265), Canterbury bell (photos) (p. 265), spool bed (p. 266).

Day of the Locust, p. 263:

It was on this trip that Faye acquired a new suitor by the name of Homer Simpson.

What I'm reading right now is Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust in the handsome LOA edition.

Finished Nabokov's Blues, which was engrossing but marred by poor proofing -- there were an ungodly number of typos. That said, the book is an excellent introduction to lepidoptery, and it gives a dramatic and convincing account of Nabokov's worth as a scientist.

Particular care was taken in the case of the new species humbert, to ensure that in nature, if not in literature, Lolita would live eternally free from the monstrous Humbert Humbert. The scientists made certain to place humbert in a separate genus and assigned to that name a species with a limited range living some fifteen hundred miles from where lolita might ever be found roaming.

Page 261, Nabokov's Blues.

What I'm reading right now is Nabokov's Blues, a good solid book that I have been picking off and on since January.

Finished A King's Ransom! Somewhat fun. Thickly plotted but thinly written. Worth it for the supperb and commendable research that went into it.

Foreigners heard so much about Colombia and its drugs, but no one seemed to talk about the eight-year-old kids on the streets blowing their brains out with industrial-strength fumes.

Page 133, A King's Ransom. (For the kids, the brand of choice for glue is Boxer -- see picture here.)

What I'm reading right now is James Grippando's A King's Random. I'm ankle-deep in this suspense novel about Colombia and kidnappings. The prose is overheated but behind it is a great deal of research: there are a ton of details -- tiny tiny things -- that the grippando gets down pat.

Finished My Beautiful Laundrette -- the essays that came w/ the screenplay were fantastic, and one can see Kureishi's almost affectionate contempt for Thatcher. One can't help but think he'd grown more bitter by the time he wrote Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. One can't blame him.

What I'm reading right now is last week's New Yorker -- excellent as always, though the Hersh piece on shady oil dealings is a little confusing. The fiction issue from two weeks back was full of wonderful new writers, most of whom managed to be both very serious and very funny. (By the by, the NYer web site rocks these days.)