Mrs Maas and Ms Zieman

Mrs Maas

One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.

Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible. But this did not work. She thought of a hotel room in Mazatlan whose door had just been slammed, it seemed forever, waking up two hundred birds down in the lobby; a sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west; a dry, disconsolate tune from the fourth movement of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra; a whitewashed bust of Jay Gould that Pierce kept over the bed on a shelf so narrow for it she'd always had the hovering fear it would someday topple on them. Was that how he'd died, she wondered, among dreams, crushed by the only ikon in the house? That only made her laugh out loud and helpless: You're so sick, Oedipa, she told herself, or the room, which knew.

Mia

Ms Ziemann

Mia Ziemann needed to know what to wear at a deathbed.

The net counseled simplicity and sincerity. Mia was a ninety-four-year-old Californian medical economist, while the prospective deceased, Martin Warshaw, had been her college sweetheart some seventy-four years previously. Mia could expect some prepared statement. There would very likely be a bequest of some sort. Conversation would involve an attempt to put Mr. Warshaw’s life into retrospective order, to supply the sense of grace and closure so desirable during life’s final chapter. She would not be asked to witness the actual moment of death.

A deathbed reunion of long-separated lovers was a challenge to etiquette, but the late twenty-first century shone in social tidiness. Dilemmas of this sort were exhaustively debated in endless rounds of calls for commentary, working papers from boards of experts, anecdotal testimonies, ethics conventions, sworn public hearings, policy manuals. No aspect of human existence escaped smoothing over by thoughtful, seasoned, and mature counsel.

I would really love to be able to produce sentences like these two novel writers can do. In novels the first sentence, paragraph and page are really important. They can make or break your attention. And good novels are clever and complex beasts. Chapeau to anybody who achieves to start well and finish one.

plink, 3 comments,    praise or blame!
 

Go West, Young Man

plink, nix,    praise or blame!
 

Rather

rather be fishing

plink, nix,    praise or blame!
 

All Along The Lee Shore

Shells lie scattered in the sand
Winking up like shining eyes, at me, From the sea

All along the lee shore

plink, nix,    praise or blame!
 

Kinda perfect

Bambus - Wu Chen (1280-1354)

plink,  only 1 comment,    praise or blame!
 

 
last updated: 05.04.22, 07:16
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Geändert
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We have grossly erred
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by MaryW (21.12.21, 07:42)
Did not want to spell the names out
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by StefanL (19.12.21, 08:45)
...
with four letters it becomes easier though i am not sure with hafi… anyhoo, inms guessing acronyms or whatever this is. *it’s not my steckenpferd
by tobi (24.11.21, 20:49)
Should be
pretty easy to guess from the context and image who HaFi and InTu are. Besides, thx for the hint to the open bold-tag.
by MaryW (22.10.21, 01:16)
Low hanging fruit
1 comment, lower geht es mathematisch schon aber psychosomatisch nicht.
by MaryW (15.10.21, 19:51)
...
da ist wohl ein <b> offen geblieben… und wer oder was sind HF und IT?
by tobi (25.09.21, 10:50)
manche nennen das
low hanging fruits, no?¿
by motzes (25.08.21, 20:33)
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Well
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by MaryW (18.07.21, 08:54)
Und noch etwas
Die Schutzkleidung ist ein großes Problem. Sie verhindert allzu oft, dass mann mit anderen Säugetieren gut umgehen kann.
by StefanL (26.05.19, 07:09)
Yeah
U get 1 big smile from me 4 that comment! And yes, i do not like embedded except it is good like this. It's like....
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Mustererkennung
Just saying. #esc #strachevideo pic.twitter.com/OIhS893CNr— Helene Voglreiter (@HeeLene) May 19, 2019 (Sorry, falls embedded unsocial media unerwünscht ist…)
by tobi (19.05.19, 10:57)
Yeah
That's an adequate comment! Und das erste Zitat ein ganz besonders tolles Beispiel für den "Umschlag von Quantität in Qualität".
by MaryW (15.05.19, 19:57)
...
In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen people. – Momus You’ll always be a planet to me, Mr Bacchus. – Charon Fußnote! Find ick knorke.....
by tobi (15.05.19, 14:07)
...
what about hindsight is 20/20?
by tobi (05.05.19, 14:00)

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