...on readings, writings, rants, and random reflections
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Readings: Backing a Winner
It has been announced that Denis Johnson's excellent novel, Tree of Smoke, has won the National Book Award. I don't like to brag, but I told you so...here and here.
I am an introverted blue collar pilgrim, surviving near the center of the continent, on the fringes of a shopworn civilization. I abide in rooms full of partially-read tomes, each bookmarked with the fragment of a shattered illusion.
Everything which is inspired, heroic or saintly is derived from contemplation.
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One--the smallest of numbers... That is the infinite. A number which increases thinks that it is getting nearer to infinity. It is getting further away from it. You have to stoop to rise.