The blond hustler
“The blond hustler stands outside the Gold Cup Coffee Shop.”
—John Rechy, from The Sexual Outlaw, 1977.
a disc of light
“The Patti Smith Group’s new record is Radio Ethiopia on Arista Records. Patti says: ‘Radio Ethiopia goes beyond the wax into a disc of light. Fight the good fight.’”
—Patti Smith, from the L’Anarchie Flier, 1977; reprinted in The Outlaw Bible of American Literature, 2004.
ART/RAT
“THE ART/RAT DAWNS AGAIN! ART/RAT KNAWS THRU SPACE/ RUSHING TADPOLES/ A BLACK STREAK ACROSS THE WHITE HOTEL…THE GLASS THAT SEPARATES HIM FROM SOCIETY IS THE TRUE PRISON OF LIGHT…ART/RAT IN THE SHAPE OF A BOY DRESSED IN A COAT OF MILK…ACTION PAINTER…”
—Patti Smith, from the L’Anarchie Flier, 1977; reprinted in The Outlaw Bible of American Literature, 2004.
this dragon
“Dragons . . . Imagine one flying over one of the meadows, high above New York City’s Central Park, one crowded Sunday afternoon. Maybe this dragon could be Joey Ramone. I don’t see why not. He could be a beautiful golden-amber colored one with a silver lightning ambience radiating from his body and wings. He’d have two flashing and loving eyes and would wink down at everybody staring up at him in amazement. Then he would spread his fiery wings and fly towards the sun to California to go surfing and to have some fun.”
—Dee Dee Ramone, from Legend of a Rock Star, 2002.
a white tornado
“Visions of heavenly angels passed before Harrys mother as the psalmist sang so soothingly to her, before the buzzing of the phone in her hand, and the exploding of a bottle of cleaner into a white tornado, dispersed them.”
—Hubert Selby Jr, from Requiem for a Dream, 1978.
a scarlet text
“Yes, History could pass for a scarlet text, its jot and tittle graven red in human blood.”
—Eldridge Cleaver, from Soul on Ice, 1968.
exact gradations
“Proclaimed by criers in the county courts and public assemblies, exact gradations of fabric, color, fur trimming, ornaments, and jewels were laid down for every rank and income level. Bourgeois might be forbidden to own a carriage or wear ermine, and peasants to wear any color but black or brown. Florence allowed doctors and magistrates to share the nobles’ privilege of ermine, but ruled out for merchants’ wives multicolored, striped, and checked gowns, brocades, figured velvets, and fabrics embroidered in silver and gold.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
long pointed shoes of red leather from Cordova
“To the grands seigneurs of multiple fiefs and castles, identity was no problem. In their gold-embossed surcoats and velvet mantles lined in ermine, their slashed and parti-colored tunics embroidered with family crest or verses or a lady-love’s initials, their hanging scalloped sleeves with colored linings, their long pointed shoes of red leather from Cordova, their rings and chamois gloves and belts hung with bells and trinkets, their infinity of hats—puffed tam-o’shanters and furred caps, hoods and brims, chaplets of flowers, coiled turbans, coverings of every shape, puffed, pleated, scalloped, or curled into a long tailed pocket called a liripipe—they were beyond imitation.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
checkerboard squares of red and green
“Many were the complaints, like that of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1342, that the clergy were dressing like laymen, in checkerboard squares of red and green, short coats, “notably scant,” with excessively wide sleeves to show linings of fur or silk, hoods and tippets of “wonderful length,” pointed and slashed shoes, jeweled girdles hung with gilt purses. Worse, . . . they wore beards and long hair to the shoulders contrary to canonical rule. . . .”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
close to the inexplicable
“People lived close to the inexplicable. the flickering lights of marsh gas could only be fairies or goblins; fireflies were the souls of unbaptized dead infants. In the terrible trembling and fissures of an earthquake or the setting afire of a tree by lightning, the supernatural was close at hand.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.