[lit-ideas] Sunday Twofer
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2010 10:35:59 -0800
Winkel is Dutch for shop apparently, but Rip van Shop was not actually a
fishmonger on the quays of Rotterdam, flogging cockles, mussels, winkels. He
was a man in charge of a dustier establishment, back of the Hague, open all
hours, staffed by immigrants. The Rip van shop offered zippers, delivered to
your door in short order. They'd come in white vans, those wonky kind, that
always seem dodgy when you drive behind, and you think, "I wonder how much of
the interior contents are nicked?" Keep you awake at night, that can, dreams
of a Rip van van slowing to a stop right outside your door.
It occurred to me when reading this week that the reason god doesn't speak is
that he (or she) knows all and so can say... nothing. An anecdote, by way of
explanation: I was deep into a history of gout. Not only were the authors able
to explain the development of this diagnosis, they also had investigated uses
of the metaphor through time, how newspapers and armies and politicians were
described as swollen or inflated, and thus diseased, the role of gout in
"Humphrey Clinker," the ailment's visual heritage, what Edmund Duke Moore
thought... Not for the first time when reading an academic book, I found
myself wishing that the authors had harvested just a little less. Looking for
the path in their store that had brought me to this place, I felt a longing not
for the straight way or the narrow way that makes tales childishly simple--if
that were my joy why write like this--but for just a little stronger hint of
scent.
David Ritchie,
Portland,
Oregon------------------------------------------------------------------
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