Ransen's Blog

 Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov is a strange and compelling book.   I'd have thought it was impossible to put on as a radio play, but, dramatized by Oliver Emanuel, it comes off very very well. Just as strange as the original, you can find it on BBC Sounds.   By chance I'd re-read the novel just a few months ago, so I'm not sure how confusing it might be to someone who comes to it fresh. Still, a brilliant adaptation, directed by Kirsty Williams.  I've neve r been able to get passed the first few pages of Ulysses by James Joyces, but this adaptation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ... ...was very good, again you'll find it on BBC Sounds. Read by Andrew Scott. Get the two omnibus editions if you can find them.   It has been a good couple of weeks on the radio, because there was also Wunderkind , b y Sebastian Baczkiewicz. " It's 1770 and Leopold Mozart is taking his 14-year-old son on a much-anticipated trip to Italy to perform for the great an

 I don't know why but Winter skies seem to offer more infinity (compared with Summer skies). Maybe because I find heat oppressive, and I find the cold clean.

 

 "Conceptual artists have twisted themselves so much that their contortions leave them able to look up their own assholes. They claim to they see diamonds when all they actually see is their own shit." - Alpha F. She certainly has a way with words. "Critics have no expertise or insight into the workings of an artist's heart" - Alpha F.

 It's later than you think.

Anne Tyler is great at describing all sorts of humanity, including (in "A Patchwork Planet"), old men who leave their tools to surviving friends and relatives.  Old men who imagine, before they die, that their precious collection of useful objects will be gratefully received by other people. And then she goes on to say that the tools are usually ignored, then taken to the dump. I don't intend to die any time soon, but I think about that occasionally when I look at my collection of stuff. "He'd like that spanner!" I think. And "He'd like that power drill". And so on. Anne Tyler, even if she has never never met me, has my type down to a tee.

 I was using my soldering iron and unplugged it before I left the room. I stepped outside the door and thought: "Have I really unplugged it?" I stepped back in again and saw at a glance that I had:    And then I wondered when how had the concept of "unconnected" gotten into my brain, and how could I at a glance see that the soldering iron was unconnected. Somewhere in my brain the concept of unconnected was recognized as being active when shapes from my eyes we transmitted and interpreted.