From below the surface was a sheet of mercury and then I’d see it break roughly as she kicked against it coming down to me. It was like watching her through a sheet of clean green cellophane. She came and curved around me and slid along my back and shoulders. A futuristic kind of love. Love…
Simon had been made during his parents’ honeymoon in Madagascar. His father was part-Greek, part-Irish Jew, a musical critic who wrote under the name of K. Kane. Everybody thought, with good reason, that the K., stood for Killer. He had married a beautiful Ojibway Indian mezzo-soprano who sang under the name of Minnehaha Langtry. The air-conditioning had broken down on their wedding night, and they attributed Simon’s shortcomings to the inclement conditions in which he had been conceived. Simon attributed them to his eight months in a plastic womb. His mother had not wanted to spoil her figure, so he had been removed from her womb and put in a cylinder connected to a machine. Simon had understood why his mother had done this. But he could not forgive her for later going on an eating jag and gaining sixty pounds. If she was going to be obese anyway, why hadn’t she kept him where he belonged?
from Venus on the Half-Shell (1974) by “Kilgore Trout” (actually Philip José Farmer)
A story about the recovery of life…Like other cult writers—Salinger for instance, or Vonnegut—Hoban writes about ordinary people making life-affirming gestures in a world that threatens to dissolve in madness.” —Newsweek on Russell Hoban’s TURTLE DIARY (NYRB reissuing 6/11)
TURTLE DIARY is for people who like IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE
Though the clip above might not convince you, Fred didn’t always have Ginger: The Boston Review looks at the many dance partners of Fred Astaire, as catalogued by Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced With Fred Astaire and The Astaires: Fred and Adele.
GINGER
Coming in June—NYRB Classics’ reissue of Russell Hoban’s TURTLE DIARY! Introduction by “Ed Park.”
This gentleman was reading Renata Adler’s Speedboat on the Q train to work this morning. You can hear Renata live in the flesh tomorrow at 155 Freeman St., between Manhattan & Franklin Aves in Greenpoint, as part of the Issue Project Room “Littoral” event series, tomorrow at 8 p.m….
