Snippets (books)

Things to use or delete. See Snippets.

Hell’s Angels

Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1967, Random House) is an exceptionally good book – every page is both informative and entertaining. Great writing, a great story, straight from the heart without apology. Thompson invited parody later, but in the sixties he was an unadulterated force of nature.

Yes it’s about the Angels, but it’s really about America. (My fellow Americans, if you have not read this book, get busy. If I had my way it would be standard reading in high school American Studies class.)

One for the ages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%27s_Angels:_The_Strange_and_Terrible_Saga_of_the_Outlaw_Motorcycle_Gangs

https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/the-hells-angels-have-left-the-building/142536/33

Real Character

Wilkins hustled Daniel out of bed one night in the wee hours and took him on a dangerous nighttime hay-wain ride to the gaol in Epsom town. “Fortune has smiled on our endeavours,” Wilkins said. “The man we are going to interview was condemned to hang. But hanging crushes the parts that are of interest to us—certain delicate structures in the neck. Fortunately for us, before the hangman could get to him, he died of a bloody flux.”

...

“What we need is a systematic alphabet—made so that the shapes of the characters themselves provide full information as to how they are pronounced.”

These words filled Daniel with a foreboding that turned out to be fully justified: by the time the sun rose, they had fetched the dead man from the gaol, brought him back out to the cottage, and carefully cut his head off. Charles Comstock was rousted from bed and ordered to dissect the corpse, as a lesson in anatomy (and as a way of getting rid of it). Meanwhile, Hooke and Wilkins connected the head’s wind-pipe to a large set of fireplace-bellows, so that they could blow air through his voice-box. Daniel was detailed to saw off the top of the skull and get rid of the brains so that he could reach in through the back and get hold of the soft palate, tongue, and other meaty bits responsible for making sounds. With Daniel thus acting as a sort of meat puppeteer, and Hooke manipulating the lips and nostrils, and Wilkins plying the bellows, they were able to make the head speak. When his speaking-parts were squished into one configuration he made a very clear “O” sound, which Daniel (very tired now) found just a bit unsettling. Wilkins wrote down an O-shaped character, reflecting the shape of the man’s lips. This experiment went on all day, Wilkins reminding the others, when they showed signs of tiredness, that this rare head wouldn’t keep forever—as if that weren’t already obvious. They made the head utter thirty-four different sounds. For each one of them, Wilkins drew out a letter that was a sort of quick freehand sketch of the positions of lips, tongue, and other bits responsible for making that noise. Finally they turned the head over to Charles Comstock, to continue his anatomy-lesson, and Daniel went to bed for a series of rich nightmares.

-- Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

Bibliophile

I unpacked some books that had been stored in boxes since my last move, and arranged them on shelves, close at hand for ready reference.

If a man had a thousand women, and some were at hand but others were shut away in a box, wouldn't rather have all of the thousand women right at hand?

Ah, books -- my mistresses, my harim!