Subject
VN Miscellany
Date
Body
Two possible VN associations caught my eye yesterday. As a dog days
exercise, see if you make the same associations:
1) In a story by Allan Gurganus "Toward a More Precise Identification of
the Newer Angels" (New Yorker, Sept. 5), a rep of Welcome Wagon to
Heaven details some of the benefits for newcomers--among them, availing
oneself of missed opportunities. In this case a home-made lemon-meringue
pie that didn't get eaten. The pie "cooling on a Kansas windowsill....A
confection made twenty minutes back by your mom, who'll be dead (drunk
driver, laundry truck) before suppertime--her final creation and gift,
steam rising, set on a tea towel, your back yard's blooming fruit trees
in view. You wander home from school."
2) In actor Ray Milland's rather dull autobiography (_Wide-Eyed in
Babylon_ 1974), he describes a visit to William Randoph Hearsts' fabled
castle "San Simeon" near Cambria CA--a strange mixture of down-home
parsimony (catsup bottles on the table and paper napkins) and Richeliu's
bed. The visitor are invited on a picnic: "Throughout the castle grounds
and far into the distances of the ranch were telephones, usually in
trees...."
exercise, see if you make the same associations:
1) In a story by Allan Gurganus "Toward a More Precise Identification of
the Newer Angels" (New Yorker, Sept. 5), a rep of Welcome Wagon to
Heaven details some of the benefits for newcomers--among them, availing
oneself of missed opportunities. In this case a home-made lemon-meringue
pie that didn't get eaten. The pie "cooling on a Kansas windowsill....A
confection made twenty minutes back by your mom, who'll be dead (drunk
driver, laundry truck) before suppertime--her final creation and gift,
steam rising, set on a tea towel, your back yard's blooming fruit trees
in view. You wander home from school."
2) In actor Ray Milland's rather dull autobiography (_Wide-Eyed in
Babylon_ 1974), he describes a visit to William Randoph Hearsts' fabled
castle "San Simeon" near Cambria CA--a strange mixture of down-home
parsimony (catsup bottles on the table and paper napkins) and Richeliu's
bed. The visitor are invited on a picnic: "Throughout the castle grounds
and far into the distances of the ranch were telephones, usually in
trees...."