a purple velvet chair
“Now said he I promised you some proper boots.
The boy could think of no finer thing but knowing how much boots cost he said he’d rather spend the money on a present for his mother and for this received a powerful clip across the back of the head and then were hauled by the ear across the road to what they call a GENERAL STORE.
Soon the boy were sitting in a purple velvet chair with a cove in a suit and fancy collar attending him yes Sir no Sir Mr. Power Sir.
This lad will be wanting a pair of elastic sided boots with Cuban heels.”
—Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang, 2000.
gold from lead
“That were the moment George’s eyes changed colour Kate will attest to that. One moment they was blue the next a yellow brown the colour of a ginger cat. In the heat of the furnace metals change their nature in olden days they could make gold from lead.”
—Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang, 2000.
spilled like broken crystal
“The words must be said and say them I did beneath the dazzling Milky Way the skies spilled like broken crystal across the heavens.”
—Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang, 2000.
a vision
“She stands up, nude as an oyster. We look over at the fight in the cemetery. When she had clothes on, she wasn’t much to look at. But naked, she is a vision. She has an urgent body that makes you forget the crooked nose. Her hair is dyed pink, but her organ hair isn’t.”
—Barry Hannah, “Coming Close to Donna”, Airships, 1978.
Noumena
“Noumena is what you see with your eyes closed, that immaterial golden ash, Ta the Golden Angel— Phenomena is what you see with your eyes open. . . .”
—Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels, 1965.
rivers of America
“The rivers of America and all the trees on all those shores and all the leaves on all those trees and all the green worlds in all those leaves and all the chlorofic molecules in all those green worlds and all the atoms in all those molecules, and all the infinite universes within all those atoms, and all our hearts and all our tissue and all our thoughts and all our brain cells and all the molecules and atoms in every cell, and all the infinite universes in every thought—bubbles and balloons—and all the starlights dancing on all the wavelets of rivers without end and every where in the world never mind America . . .”
—Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels, 1965.
that suggestion of mystery
“Mathilde brought to her canvases something that her master . . . could never have approached. She would use a light body to underpin, perhaps a yellow-white as a basis for a fiery red. Or she would lay a green-white beneath a cooler red and glaze it with a strong color. These glazes were, where necessary, partly wiped off or blended with all sorts of colors in adjacent areas. Thus she created that suggestion of mystery which continually engages the eye anew and never tires it.”
—Peter Carey, Parrot & Olivier in America, 2010.
the compositor’s genius
“ ‘Where did you learn to read?’
‘I learned from my father very young. He was a compositor.’
‘I have it on good authority,’ I remarked, ’that the compositor’s genius is to recognize the letters without understanding a single word.’ ”
—Peter Carey, Parrot & Olivier in America, 2010.
DJ Neff
