I've just started reading -- belatedly, Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet" --
a book (or books) that my mother went on and on about when they first came
out. Aside from what reading this book now tells me about my mother, it's
kind of stunning to have the narrator talk, in "Justine," about returning
"link by link along the iron chain of memory" and then to say: "I spoke of
the uselessness of art but added nothing truthful about its consolations.
The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this -- that
only _there_, in the silences of the painter or the writer can reality be
reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side. Our common
actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the
cloth-of-gold -- the meaning of the pattern."
That last sentence is really something! We might even be able to think
about it in a bunch of contexts --
Cheers.
-- Ron Mallis Ron2785@eworld.com