If you could only take pictures of things like this, and take them in this way:
The Ansonia, the neighbourhood’s great landmark, was built by Stanford White. It looks like a baroque palace from Prague or Munich enlarged a hundred times, with towers, domes, huge swells and bubbles of metal gone green from exposure, iron fretwork and festoons. Black television antennae are densely planted on its round summits. Under the changes of weather it may look like marble or like sea water, black as slate in the fog, white as tofu in sunlight. This morning it looked like the image of itself reflected in deep water, white and cumulous above, with cavernous distortions underneath. Together, the two men gazed at it. (p.5)
On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores. And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence—I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally. The sidewalks were wider than any causeway; the street itself was immense, and it quaked and gleamed and it seemed to Wilhelm to throb at the last limit of endurance. And although the sunlight appeared like a broad tissue, its actual weight made him feel like a drunkard. (p.115)
The flowers and lights fused ecstatically in Wilhelm’s blind, wet eyes; the heavy sea-like music came up to his ears. It poured into him where he had hidden himself in the center of a crowd by the great and happy oblivion of tears. He heard it and sank deeper than sorrow, through torn sobs and cries toward the consummation of his heart’s ultimate need. (p.118)
- From Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day
This inspires me a hundred times more than the thousand fashionable photographers from the million photo programs there are in the world.
The book itself is just a little too much for me now. When I was younger and more lost, every page of Bellow meant something very personal. But now, though still enjoyable, though it still inspires some recognition, I can’t identify with the giant tragedies the characters make out of their essentially safe lives. There is a reluctance to really grapple with life, with what is physical. They want to split from their bodies, too much in love with their minds. It comes across as whining, instead of the metaphysical wailing that Bellow wants it to be. Perhaps I’ve become smaller somehow?
Posted 2 years ago
