Ordinary finds

Minor White (July 9, 1908 - 1976): Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco), 1959

(via wood_s_lot)

The Klein jump - an acte gratuite - reminds me of the body artist, Falling Man, in Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name.

Another Falling Man story is Jonathan Franzen’s great post-9/11 novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The closing sequence of the novel is an animation of a body falling up to safety in the WTC tower…

(Photo: Richard Drew - read also this article by Tom Junod)

Franzen uses several other graphic games, for instance he includes a copy-edited letter. The sender tells the story of the fire-bombings of Dresden (homage to Vonnegut) to his estranged son, who has coldly redacted the letter for grammar and other mistakes…

Another game in Franzen’s book is the reference to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s house in Greenwich Village (New York’s narrowest house). The Pulitzer winning poet, Millay, was found dead at the bottom of the stairs of this house, having suffered a fall… In the novel, Franzen’s boy protagonist, Oskar, visits all the people named Black in the whole of NYC - one of them lives in this house.

Photo of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Carl Van Vechten, 1933

———

First Fig    

-

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

It gives a lovely light!

Let us now praise great female poets…

A Grave    

Man looking into the sea,

taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have to

          yourself,

it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,

but you cannot stand in the middle of this;

the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave. (More)

Marianne Moore

(Photo: Carl Van Vechten, November 13, 1948)