theNewerYork

Freedom means nothing left; cab change receptacles are hearing aids in which one’s fingers jam - when clips are coming in quite fast, it’s like waking up and trying to orient the bed. Which side can the wall be on, which side is uptown, downtown, which town is it, anyway? In some of the best motels, near airports, along highways, they have Magic Fingers, a device which, for one quarter put into a metal box, shakes the bed for sixty seconds and sends you quietly to sleep. There are no fingers about it. It is more like sleeping on a train when the tracks are good. A sticker on the metal box says that you can have Magic Fingers in your own home. I don’t know anyone who has.

— 

Renata Adler, Speed Boat

cab change receptacles are hearing aids in which one’s fingers jam … this is very TheNewerYork.  (Like this sort of stuff.  Go get yours today!)

I shall keep on feeling less and less and remembering more and more, but what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself, into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously until one’s self itself becomes a vicar, the backward-looking face opens its eyes wide, the real face slowly becomes dim as in ld pictures and Janus is suddenly any one of us.

— Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch

TABLE OF INSTRUCTIONS

In its own way, this book consists of many books, but two books above all.

The first an be read in a normal fashion and it ends with Chapter 56, at the close of which are three garish little stars which stand for the words The End. Consequently, the reader may ignore what follows with a clean conscience.

The second should be read by beginning with Chapter 73 and then following the sequence indicated at the end of each chapter. In case of confusion or forgetfulness, one need only consult the following list:

73-1-2-116-3-84-4-71-5-81-74-6-7-8-93-68-9-104-10-65-11-136-12-106-13-115-14-114-117-15-120-16-137-17-97-18-153-19-90-20-126-21-79-22-62-23-128-24-134-25-141-60-26-109-27-28-130-151-152-143-100-76-101-144-92-103-108-64-155-123-145-122-112-154-85-150-95-146-29-107-113-30-57-70-147-31-32-142-61-33-67-83-142-34-87-105-96-94-91-82-99-35-121-36-37-98-38-39-86-78-40-59-41-148-42-75-43-125-44-102-45-80-46-47-110-48-111-49-118-50-119-51-69-52-89-53-66-149-54-129-139-133-140-138-127-56-135-63-88-72-77-131-58-131-

Each chapter has its number at the top of ever right-hand page to facilitate the search.

— 

- Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar

We don’t even know where to begin. 

Self-curate or disappear

—  Nik in Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia 

Isn’t this what the twentieth century is all about? People go into hiding even when no one is looking for them.

— Don DeLillo, White Noise

You’ve established a wonderful thing here with Hitler. you created it, you nurtured it, you made it your own. nobody on the faculty of any college or university in thus part of the country can so much as utter the word Hitler without a nod in your direction, literally or metaphorically. this is the center, the unquestioned source. He is now your Hitler, Gladney’s Hitler. it must be deeply satisfying for you. the college is internationally known as a result of Hitler studies. it has an identity, a sense of achievement. You’ve involved an entire system around this figure, a structure with countless subcultures and interrelated fields of study, a history within history. I marvel at the effort. it was masterful, shrewd and stunningly preemptive. it’s what I want to do with Elvis.

— 

Don DeLillo, White Noise

We do too.

xo

Jane

Madness is contagious, thought Amalfitano, sitting on the floor of his front porch as the sky grew suddenly overcast and the moon and the stars disappeared, along with the ghostly lights that are famously visible without binoculars or telescope in northern Sonora and southern Arizona.

— 

Roberto Bolano, 2666

xox Jane

Sometimes after I have come or just before I fall asleep, my mind seems to go out on a path the width of a thread that is the same color as the night. Out, out along the narrow highway sails my mind, driven by curiosity, luminous with acceptance, far and out, like a feathered hook whipped deep into the light above the stream by a magnificent cast. Somewhere, out of my reach, my control, the hook unbends into a spear, the spear shears itself into a needle, and the needle sews the world together.

— 

Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

(xx Jane)