product.
Pictures.
—Glossary of Exhibitor Terms, from Nothing More than Murder, by Jim Thompson, 1959.
mucklededung
“She had on an old mucklededung-colored coat—the way it was screaming Sears-Roebuck they should have paid her to wear it. . . .”
—Jim Thompson, Savage Night, 1953.
Tiny white things
“When I woke the last time it was nine-thirty, and sunlight was streaming into the room. It was shining right on my pillows, and my face felt hot and moist. I sat up quickly, hugging my stomach. The light, hitting into my eyes suddenly, had made me sick. I clenched my eyes against it, but the light wasn’t shut out. It seemed to be closed in, under the lids, and a thousand little images danced in its brilliance. Tiny white things, little figure-seven-shaped things: dancing and twisting and squirming.”
—Jim Thompson, Savage Night, 1953.
the part of me that was on-the-beam
“Around four in the afternoon, after I’d walked about ten miles, I came to this roadhouse. I went on past it a little ways, walking slower and slower, arguing with myself. I lost the argument—the part of me that was on-the-beam lost it–and I went back.”
—Jim Thompson, After Dark, My Sweet, 1955.
The concrete pasture
“The concrete pasture. I mean, that’s what it seems like to me. You keep going and going, and it’s always the same everywhere. Wherever you’ve been, wherever you go, everywhere you look. Just greyness and hardness, as far as you can see.”
—Jim Thompson, After Dark, My Sweet, 1955.
the silver at Darlington Hall
“I am glad to be able to recall numerous occasions when the silver at Darlington Hall had a pleasing impact upon observers. For instance, I recall Lady Astor remarking, not without a certain bitterness, that our silver ‘was probably unrivalled.’ I recall also watching Mr George Bernard Shaw, the renowned playwright, at dinner one evening, examining closely the dessert spoon before him, holding it up to the light and comparing its surface to that of a nearby platter, quite oblivious to the company around him.”
—Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day, 1989.
a peculiar fondness for orange
“Of my Auntie Dora (who died when I was very young), I remember nothing except for the color orange—whether this was the color of her complexion or hair, or of her clothes, or whether it was the reflected color of the firelight, I have no idea. All that remains is a warm, nostalgic feeling and a peculiar fondness for orange.”
—Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, 2001.
heavier than lead
“I loved the yellowness, the heaviness, of gold. My mother would take the wedding ring from her finger and let me handle it for a while, as she told me of its inviolacy, how it never tarnished. ‘Feel how heavy it is?’ she would add. ‘It’s even heavier than lead.’”
—Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, 2001.
‘the limelight’
“[G]as flames, with their glowing carbon particles, were scarcely brighter than candle flames. One needed something additional, a material that would shine with special brilliance when heated ina gas flame. Such a substance was calcia—calcium oxide, or lime—which shone with an intense greenish white light when heated. This “limelight,” Uncle Dave said, was discovered in the 1820s and used to illuminate the stages in theaters for many decades—that was why we still talked about “the limelight,” even though we no longer used lime for incandescence.”
—Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, 2001.
white-hot tungsten
“If someone could look at the earth from outer space, see how it rotated every twenty-four hours into the shadow of night, they would see millions, hundreds of millions, of incandescent bulbs light up nightly, glowing with white-hot tungsten, in the folds of that shadow—and know that man had finally conquered the darkness.”
—Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, 2001.