the Nilch’i Dine’’
“Alk’idaa’ jini. . . . In the beginning there was only darkness, with sky above and water below. Then by some mysterious and holy means, sky and water came together. When they touched, that’s when everything began. That was the First World, which was like an island floating in a sea of mist. It was red in color and it was an ancient place. There were no people living there, only Nilch’i Dine’’, who existed in spiritual form. . . . There was no sun or moon, and there were no stars. The only source of light was the sky, which comprised four sacred colors and glowed with a different hue and lit the world from a different direction according to the time of day. When the eastern sky glowed white, it was considered dawn, and the Nilch’i Dine’’ would awaken and began to stir in preparation for the day. When the southern sky glowed blue, it was considered day, and the Nilch’i Dine’’ went about their daily activities. When the western sky was yellow, it was considered evening, and the Nilch’i Dine’’ put away their work and amusements. When the northern sky turned black, it was considered night, and the Nilch’i Dine’’ lay down and went to sleep.”
—Irvin Morris, the opening passages of From the Glittering World: A Navaho Story, 1997.
luminous, metaphoric sequences
“Rebel Without a Cause’s uniqueness rests more in its cinematic syle and [James] Dean’s performance than in its script. [Nicholas] Ray uses a variety of camera angles, a dislocated mise-en-sc’ne, tight close-ups, point-of-view shots, intense color, and rapid, turbulent cutting to successfully project the tension, anger, and sense of almost metaphysical alientation that permeates the film. There are also luminous, metaphoric sequences: the “chicken run,” with a pinkish-white specter, Judy, signalling the beginning of the race in the center of a pitch-black runway lit by car headlights—an initiation rite or journey confronting death; and the scene shot in the vastness of the planetarium (which is located on a precipice) with its apocalyptic, end-of-the-world images of the galaxy exploding as the three alientated kids sit alone in the dark watching—all providing a powerful metaphor for the insecurity and isolation of adolescence.”
—Leonard Quart and Albert Auster, from American Film and Society Since 1945, 1991.
Life’s purple tide
“She wept.—Life’s purple tide began to flow
In languid streams through every thrilling vein;
Dim were my swimming eyes—my pulse was slow,
And my full heart was swell’d to dear delicious pain.”
—early Wordsworth, as quoted in The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, by John Brewer, 1997.
The humblest literature
“The humblest literature—chapbooks, cheap abbreviated novels, almanacs and ballads—could be bought from itinerant pedlars and chapmen who travelled the coutryside selling reading matter, trinkets, gifts, household goods and toys. Inside his heavy pack the chapman carried traditional stories, first widely printed in the sixteenth century, moral tales with such forbidding titles as The Drunkard’s Legacy and Youth’s Warning Piece, joke and riddle books like Joaks upon Joaks, and severely abbreviated versions of such novels as Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. . . . These slim, small volumes, often printed execrably, were popular staples among all classes. What they lacked in substance they made up in good value: their greatest virtue was that they were cheap.
Itinerant salesmen carried only these sorts of book because any others would have been too bulky or heavy for them. But in the bookshops these small or penny “histories” shared the shelves with books of every size—from slim duodecimos (one twelfth the size of a printing sheet), octavos (an eighth of a sheet), quartos (a quarter of a sheet) to large folios (the size of a sheet with a single fold).”
—John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, 1997.
The Blackamoor Washed White
“At Drury Lane [theater] in January 1750 when the management proposed to repeat a play which the audience had driven from the stage the evening before, “the Audience . . . pull’d up the Benches, tore down the Kings Arms, and would have done more mischief if Mr. Lacy [David Garrick’s partner] had not gone into the pit, and talk’d to ’em, what they resented was giving out a piece again after they had damn’d it.’ The Blackamoor Washed White, a comic opera written by the notoriously quarrelsome and much-disliked journalist and cleric Henry Bate, suffered a similar fate in 1776. After four nights of opposition during which ‘numbers of the pit and boxes got upon the stage and blows passed between some of them’, [actor and manager David] Garrick was forced to withdraw the play.”
—John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, 1997.
A General History of Quadrupeds
An advertisement by Thomas Bewick for the publication by subscription of A General History of Quadrupeds, 1788.
—John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, 1997.
three lavish books
“[Thomas] Bewick’s fame rested on three publications. His A General History of Quadrupeds (1790), an illustrated history of four-footed beats, went through eight editions in Bewick’s lifetime. His equally successful two-volume History of British Birds, a more complex and scientific study, appeared in 1797 and 1804; it was reprinted six times before his death in 1828. Lastly, the Fables of Aesop, a project conceived during a nearly fatal illness in 1812 and finally published in 1818, combined Bewick’s love of nature with his penchant for trenchant moralizing. As Bewick himself recognized, these three lavish books transformed his life.”
—John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, 1997.
DID YOU KNOW . . .
“In the DARK AGES, artistic hacks (ironically known as “ILLUMINATORS”) supported themselves by illustrating BORING PRAYERBOOKS with colorful little paintings; such tomes, affordable only to WEALTHY COLLECTORS, were known as “Books of Hours,” sporting calendars, stories of Saints, and penitential Psalms, some taking MONTHS or even YEARS to complete! These MISERABLE VIRGINS should thus be thanked for their selfless contributions to the art of the GAILY-DECORATED PICTURE BOOK!”
—Chris Ware, from the third hardback volume of The Acme Novelty Library, 2006.
the sweetest scene
“The most important of [the] tourist knick-knacks [of Georgian England] was the so-called Claude glass. Sometimes a piece of coloured glass through which to look at the landscape, it was more usually a convex mirror that miniaturized the view and, in its compression of the landscape, made it look more general and uniform. It was a tool for capturing and manipulating nature, for making a frameable possession, and it required you to turn your back on what you wanted to see. In 1769 the poet Thomas Gray described looking at Derwentwater in the Lake District . . . using his Claude glass: ‘saw in my glass a picture, that if I could transmit it to you, & fix it in all the softness of its living colours, would fairly sell for a thousand pounds. this is the sweetest scene I can yet discover in point of pastoral beauty.’”
—John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, 1997.
a green carpet of moss
“A fraction of an hour later, and all out of breath, I was knocking on the door. Then a strange thing happened. A grey little mouselike girl that I’d never seen before came to the door. It was all dark inside even though it should have been light, and she blinked for a few seconds before she could say anything. The dismal creature was a stranger and I started to say something, but she looked up at me with her unbeautiful eyes and said, ‘Shhhh! They’re all asleep, and I’m going too.’ Exhaling I said yeah and went to sit on the stairs between the top floor and the roof. I was no more than four feet away before the lock clicked to behind me. I’ve always hated the idea of locks in general, and especially the sound they make as the people I just left lock me out. I always wait for my visitor to get well away before snapping the lock back, and I feel weak and mean if I forget.
So I sat on those seldom used stairs with my legs stretched out flat and stared at the steps between them. A leak in the roof was sending a steady drip drip onto the spot I was watching, and it had taken green. A little trickle ran from the pool down onto the next step, then the one after. I got caught up in the sound it made because the sound of running rippling water is one of the most timeless imaginable to me. It was no different there on the stairs than it would be in caverns much too deep to ever be found except by spiritual proxy like I was doing. I could hear it just so, just the way it was, and I ran my fingers through my hair, one . . . drip, two . . . drip, three . . . thinking how I’d like to give up my human consciousness and be found here the next day as a green carpet of moss, but not recognized. People seldom climbed over those steps and when it rained, I could drink cold water.”
—William S. Burroughs, Jr, a runaway on psilocybin mushrooms in Manhattan. The ellipsis are his. From the autobiographical Speed, 1973.