Monday, October 18, 2010

a writing desk

http://bookaccessories.sc7.biz/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/jane_austen_writing_table.jpg Jane Austen's desk



:image 

"You fold the dish towel. You remind me of someone who walks backwards, sweeping away his footsteps. You go up to your room and close the door. Yesterday I stood and listened. What did I think I would hear? The scratching of a pen?" excerpt: Great House

Illustration by André Da Loba

 http://media.npr.org/assets/artslife/books/2010/10/great-house/greathouse_sq.jpg?t=1286551876&s=11Great House 

Dov had wished to become a writer, but the father, in an outraged protest against literature’s elective affinity with suffering, squashed the ambition. “Who do you think you are? I asked. The hero of your own existence?” 

"To call it a desk is to say too little. The word conjures some homely, unassuming article of work or domesticity, a selfless and practical object that is always poised to offer up its back for its owner to make use of, and which, when not in use, occupies its allotted space with humility. ... This desk was something else entirely. An enormous, foreboding thing that bore down on the occupants of the room it inhabited, pretending to be inanimate but, like a venus fly trap, ready to pounce on them and digest them via one of its many little terrible drawers. Perhaps you think I'm making a caricature of it. I don't blame you. You'd have to have seen the desk with your own eyes to understand that what I'm telling you is perfectly accurate."  Nicole Krauss

:NY Times, : npr 




1 comment:

simon said...

Nice desk for sure. I wrote a friend a letter by hand some time back. It was so difficult