‘Clumsy and naked’
“I said, ‘I need an adjective that—’ and before I could further define my need, Roger said, ‘Clumsy and naked.’ I laughed out loud.”
—Leonard Stern, on the invention of Mad Libs, the word game, which is 50 years old, as of, approximately, now.
The ‘bed’
“[. . .] he now saw his apartment through his loved one’s eyes. ‘This was no ‘apartment’! This was a slot!—one of four created by cutting an ordinary front bedroom and rear bedroom in two. [. . .] The ‘kitchen’ consisted of the smallest ‘stove,’ ‘sink,’ and ‘refrigerator’ ever made squeezed into what had been a closet in a former, better life. The quotation marks spread like dermatitis in Adam’s brain as he thought of what must be going through the mind of the girl of his dreams. The ‘bed’ was a mattress on a cheap, unfinished flush door from a lumberyard, supported at the corners by cinder blocks.”
—Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons, 2004. The bracketed ellipses are mine.
The Rather Difficult Font Game
If you think you know fonts, you might want to play The Rather Difficult Font Game.
Thirty Tables of Contents
orangey slices of postadolescent flesh
“It being Monday night, Hoyt and eight or nine other Saint Rays had gravitated to the library couches and easy chairs, cracked leather upholstery and all, to chill, i.e., drift through the evening in as aimless and effortless a manner as possible, bolstered by the presence of others like themselves. Naturally ESPN SportsCenter was on the big plasma TV screen. Hot colors and orangey slices of postadolescent flesh flared in a Gatorade commercial . . . and now four poorly postured middle-aged white sportswriters sat slouched in little low-backed, smack-red fiberglass swivel chairs panel-discussing the ‘sensitive’ matter of the way black players dominated basketball.”
—Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons, 2004.
The orange core of the world
“Dashorn faked a pass to André and, without looking, threw the ball inside to Jojo. The orange core of the world—Jojo had it in his hands in the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: of fourteen thousand cheering souls.”
—Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons, 2004.
the secret of life
“Melancholy is a the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.”
—Henri Frederic Amiel, quoted by Eric G. Wilson in Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, 2008.
memento mori
“It is now that we understand the great profundity of the old idea of the memento mori (remember that you will die). Meditative souls of the Middle Ages often adorned their tables with skulls or kept close by etching of skeletons engaged in the danse macabre. Later, during the early Renaissance, funeral art featured grim reapers or skull and bones. Even later large clocks had engraved upon them mottoes, such as ultima forsan (perhaps the last) or vulnerant omnes, ultima necat (they all wound, and the last kills) or, perhaps the best known, tempus fugit (time flies). Seen in the light of Keat’s linkage of melancholy, death and beauty, these motifs do not appear to be morbid but rather celebratory, vibrant gestures toward life’s ambrosial finitude.”
—Eric G. Wilson, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, 2008.
XTT Part 3: The ‘Black Art’
a new swoosh deal
“The Wave obviously thought of Buster Roth as a lower thing, a big-time college coach who made more than a million in salary plus at least twice that in endorsements, public appearances, life-is-like-a-basketball-game motivational speeches for businessmen, and swoosh deals, as they were known because of the swoosh symbol of the Nike company, still the biggest swoosh dealer of them all. In a swoosh deal, the coach dresses the entire team, from top to bottom—jerseys, shorts, basketball shoes, and socks—in the company’s products, with each item identified by a logo—in return for . . . nobody ever seemed know exactly how much. But it was known that Nike all by itself had a $200 billion advertising budget and that swooshing, also known as ‘branding,’ was their most important form of advertising. As coach of last year’s national champions, Buster Roth had just signed a new swoosh deal, this time with the up-and-coming And 1. The numbers being bruited about were phenomenal. Whatever the sum, every cent of it went to Coach.”
—Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons, 2004.