white walls

“Directly in front of the Swede sat the model of the house. He could
see now what he had not been able to envision from Dawn’s
explanations—exactly how the long shed roof let the light into the main
hallway throught he high row of windows running the length of the front
wall. Yes, now he saw how the sun would arc through the southern sky
and the light would wash—and how happy it seemed to make her just to
say ‘wash’ after ‘light’—wash over the white walls, thus changing
everything for everyone.”

—Philip Roth, American Pastoral, 1997.

British tan

“‘This is Rita. We’re going to make her a dress glove, size four.
Black or brown, honey?’
    ‘Brown?’
    From a wrapped-up bundle of hides dampening beside
Harry, he picked one out in a pale shade of brown. ‘This is a tough
color to get,’ the Swede told her. ‘British tan. You can see, there’s
all sorts of variation in the color—see how light it is there, how dark
it is down there? Okay. This is sheepskin. What you saw in my office
was pickled. This has been tanned. This is leather. But you can still
see the animal. If you were to look at the animal,’ he said, ‘here it
is—the head, the butt, the front legs, the hind legs, and here’s the
back, where the leather is harder and thicker, as it is over our own
backbones. . . .’”

—Philip Roth, American Pastoral, 1997.

Brownstone and brick

“His father used to tell him, ‘Brownstone and brick. There was the
business. Brownstone quarried right here. Know that? Out by Belleville,
north along the river. This city’s got everything. What a business that
must have been. The guy who sold Newark brownstone and brick—he was sittin’ pretty.’”

—Philip Roth, American Pastoral, 1997.

She used to collect everything

“She used to collect everything, catalog everything, explain to him
everything, examine with the pocket magnifying glass he’d given her
every chameleonlike crab spider that she brought home to hold briefly
captive in a moistened mason jar, feeding it on dead houseflies until
she released it back onto the golden rod or the Queen Anne’s lace
(‘Watch what happens now, Dad’) Where it resumed adjusting its color to
ambish its prey.”

—Philip Roth, American Pastoral, 1997.

Vernacular Baton Rouge: Doc’s WASH & DRY

a culture of spectacle

“Ordinary Romans recognized, and usually respected, the distinctive dress of the elite. . . .
    At the very top of the cursus honorum, the censors wore all-purple togas to mark them out from the curule magistrates who wore the toga praetexta, while military commanders who qualified for a triumph, the Roman state’s highest award, were granted the most striking form of public dress available: the vestis triumphalis, which comprised the tunica palmata (a purple tunic with gold palm branches embroidered into it) covered by a toga picta (a purple toga emblazones with gold stars). Public dress thus contributed significantly towards dividing the Roman citizen body into its various status hierarchies. Rome was a culture of spectacle, and the spectacle of dress helped to emphasize some of its most important values.”

—Jonathan Edmondson, ‘Public Dress and Social Control in Rome’, from Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture, edited by Jonathan Edmondson and Allison Keith, 2008.

Roman purple

“In the Roman world, purple was a colour rich in splendour and symbolic value. The elder Pliny remarked on its ability to make every garment radiant and noted its particular association with the maiestas (majesty) of childhood. Though the romans called the colour purpura and used the term as a metonym for the child’s praetexta, the shade that adorned the toga more closely resembled garnet than purple. Roman purple varied in intensity, encompassing rose and scarlet shades, but in Pliny’s estimation, in its highest glory, it was the colour of congealed blood: ‘blackish at first glance gut gleaming when held up to the light.’ Blood represents and sustains life, and is a powerful, vital force. In many cultures shades of red are believed to protect babies, children, and pregnant women—in essence, to protect nascent life.”

—Fanny Dolansky, ‘Coming of Age in the Roman World’, from Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture, edited by Jonathan Edmondson and Allison Keith, 2008.

the toga praetexta

“[A] few authors tell us that the girl wore the toga praetexta, the toga bordered by a purple stripe, just as freeborn boys did. Why children wore the toga itself is unclear, but the wool of the garment and especially its purple band (likely woven directly onto the toga) had a general apotropaic significance. Persius described the purple stripe as the guard of pre-adolescence; . . . in a declamation attributed to the rhetorician Quintilian, the colour purple is described as the one ‘by which we make the weakness of boyhood sacred and revered’. . . .”

—Kelly Olson, ‘The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl’, from Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture, edited by Jonathan Edmondson and Allison Keith, 2008.

Hobohemia

“Hobohemia was a complex and highly politicized social institution with its own unwritten system of laws, etiquette, mores, and division of labor. Although ‘tramp’ and ‘bum’ were sanctioned synonyms, ‘hobo’ specifically designated a wandering laborer (the word probably derives from ‘hoe boy,’ a seasoned farm worker).”

—Robbert Polito, Savage Art, A Biography of Jim Thompson, 1995.

Wieland (1798)

“American fiction begins with Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland (1798), a sort of early-American Pop. 1280. Theodore Wieland hears a voice—he is convinced it is the voice of God—commanding him to ‘render’ his family ‘in proof of thy faith.’ He kills his wife and children, and then advances on his sister Clara. ‘This minister is evil, but he from whom his commission was received is God. Submit then with all thy wonted resignation to a decree that cannot be reversed or resisted. . . .’ Did the voice come from Carwin, the diabolical ‘biloquist’ (ventriloquist), or did it arise from Wieland’s own troubled imagination? The same questions of madness or calculation, God or the Devil [that arise in Jim Thompson’s Pop. 1280] agitate Wieland.”

—Robbert Polito, Savage Art, A Biography of Jim Thompson, 1995.