Archives for March 8, 2006

“I suppose there is a lot of fun to be had from reading the quotations on any dust-jacket more than five years old, simply because of reviewers’ besetting vice, that of taking, or appearing to take, their contemporaries too seriously.”

Philip Larkin, “Lies, Fleas, and Gullible Mayflies”

It’s a far cry from the Teachout Museum, let me tell you, but a picture of this Constable picture, safekept from an otherwise discarded 2002 wall calendar, is what I look at when I’m at my desk. An oil sketch that I saw in person when I was in London more years ago now than I care to believe, “A Lane in Flatford” mesmerizes me even in this humble form. I’m not sure how well you can make it out in the web reproduction, but the detail I’m obsessed with is the leftmost cloud, which meets the tree to its left oddly flush. The paint seems most heavily applied here, and the cloud’s white, thick brightness arrests my eye–every day–like a tear in the canvas. This bold cloud is the most aggressive, crispest detail in the picture, but it stops short of the rather fuzzy, sweet tree, meeting it halfway. The question of which is background and which foreground seems strangely, disarmingly unresolved. The picture’s verisimilitude breaks down a little.

Honestly, I stare at this picture intermittently for hours most days, but before tonight I couldn’t have told you what was in it besides that cloud and treetop. There are figures? A lane? A fence? Huh. So that must be where the painting gets its title. Still, to me, it’s a picture of a cloud, and of painting.

The Morning News has kicked off their second annual Tournament of Books, with guest judges including Maud, Mark, Dale Peck, and Brigid Hughes, and entrants ranging from Mary Gaitskill to Kazuo Ishiguro to Zadie Smith. Should be fun, especially for those of us who are immune to the charms of March madness. A tournament for the rest of us, with brackets and everything.

And yet, until this year, some essential element seemed to be missing from the basketball tourney’s bookish equivalent…I could never quite put my finger on just what it was…. Oh yeah. Betting.

Well, it’s a pale imitation no more–the ever resourceful and creative (not to mention hometown) Coudal Partners have handicapped the books and are taking your bets now at $10 a pop, with all proceeds destined for a worthwhile charity that helps public schools. The prizes, natch, are books. Come to think of it, my forgoing a Janet Gretzky joke here is kind of a prize in its own right….