11-02-2009, 12:42 PM
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#21 (permalink)
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Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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And this is only the beginning; the walls in the living room will provide nowhere near enough space, particularly since his paper slips must be affixed neither too high nor too low; otherwise, every time Geiser forgets what he so carefully cut out an hour ago, he will have to climb on a chair or crouch on his heels to read his pieces of paper. This is not only laborious, it also prevents an overall review, and once already the chair has nearly capsized. Where, for example, is the information about the conjectural brain of the Neanderthal man? Instead, one finds oneself back with the drawing of the golden section. Where is the information about mutations, chromosomes, etc.? It is all so exasperating: Geiser is quite certain that there is an item somewhere about the quantum theory (as if it were not laborious enough, copying out texts full of scientific words, sometimes even two or three times in order to get them right). What belongs where? Some slips, especially the larger ones, start to curl when they have been on the wall for a while; they refuse to lie flat. That presents another difficulty. To read them, one has to use both hands. Some curl at the bottom, others at the sides. There is nothing one can do about it. Each day they curl more and more (probably because of the humidity), and there is no glue in the house; otherwise he could stick them to the wall, though that would have the added disadvantage of making it impossible for him to substitute an item when a new and more important one was discovered. The golden section, for example, is not all that important, and he can remember how many people are in the canton of Ticino, how high the Matterhorn is (4,505 meters above sea level), or when the Vikings reached Iceland. He is not so decrepit as all that. The paper slips will lie flat only if one uses four thumbtacks on each, but his supply is not large. So they will just have to curl; when one opens a window, creating a draft, the whole wall flutters and rustles.
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max frisch--man in the holocene.
what a fine book. i hadn't thought of it for a long time until i stumbled across this thread.
i'm not sure this is my favorite bit from this book, or my favorite bit from amongst a range of books, but i like it lots and so there we are.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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