Category Archives: history/memory

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

On how thinking and doing are different: Often enough in my life I have done things I had not decided to do. Something—whatever that may be—goes into action; “it” goes to the woman I don’t want to see anymore, “it” … Continue reading

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SH, the real and imagined

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes by Vincent Starrett (1933) This book often has a tone of loving mockery, particularly of Watson and his inexactitude with dates and, by extension, Arthur Conan Doyle’s carelessness (or laziness), that makes it a … Continue reading

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sisyphean

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.” Guildenstern in Rosencrantz … Continue reading

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city as palimpsest, redux

“Richard Lehan* has pointed out the impact of urban archaeology’s ‘discovery of layered cities’ – notably Heinrich Schliemann’s discoveries in Troy (1871) and Arthur Evans’ in Crete (Knossos, 1876) – upon modernist urban literature. Urban fantasy has been particularly influenced … Continue reading

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more about cities

(both of these from archinect.com) “Cities can’t win. When they do well, people resent them as citadels of inequality; when they do badly, they are cesspools of hopelessness….Cities are the contradictions of capitalism, spelled out in crowds. They are engines … Continue reading

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