a blind world
“The sun’s light filtered through his closed eyelids, making a blind world of burning orange warmth;”
—Paul Bowles, from Let it Come Down, 1952.
Paris
“The day opens in milky whiteness, streaks of salmon-pink sky, snails leaving their shells. Paris. Paris.”
—Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.
Moldorf is word drunk
“Moldorf is word drunk. He has no veins or blood vessels, no heart or kidneys. He is a portable trunk filled with innumerable drawers and in the drawers are labels written out in white ink, brown ink, red ink, blue ink, vermilion, saffron, mauve, sienna, apricot, turquoise, onyx, Anjou, herring, Corona, verdigris, gorgonzola. . . .”
—Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.
the proofreaders
“When the world blows up and the final edition has gone to press the proofreaders will quietly gather up all commas, semicolons, hyphens, asterisks, brackets, parenthesis, periods, exclamation marks, etc. and put them in a little box over the editorial chair.”
—Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer, 1961.
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.