Mysterious6030

@mysterious6030

Haven’t figured out just who I’ll be here, so this will just have to do for now. (Knowing me, I hope I change this before 2030)

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Bluesky

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Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· 3d

Just started _The Casebook of Sidney Zoom_ by Erle Stanley Gardner, and this collection of some of his '30s short stories for the pulps is a bunch of rollicking Great Depression era fun. All of his tales featuring the titular Zoom appeared in _Detective Fiction Weekly_ between 1930 & 1934

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Apr 27

That sounds like a fascinating read! I'm back on the PKD novels re-read in chronological order with … _The Crack In Space_

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Apr 20

Finished the Shirer yesterday, and am cleansing my palate (so to speak) with an air-filled piece of piffle, Nigel Pennick's _The Complete Illustrated Guide to Runes_. (Though I did enjoy his _Sacred Geometry_, this is much more the 'DK Guide' to runes and rune 'magic'.)

A big ol' trade paperback cover of an Element Books book by Nigel Pennick, _The Complete Illustrated Guide to Runes_. It's a mostly red cover, with a darker red frame around the red main field, and thin light red lines framing that inner area and providing some sort of graphic element dividing the various words on the cover, of which there's the title, with the word "RUNES" between two of those graphic element lines, and the author's name at the bottom, and just above that (still towards the bottom) is the subtitle of the work: "How to Interpret the Ancient Wisdom of the Runes", and then in the center of the field (there's other pictures strewn across the cover in Photoshop or whatever cover-generator program they use at Element Books, which … ahem … 'elements' we'll be getting to in just a second) are words which are gonna turn out to be powerful runes and I guess just putting them on the cover brings up powerful magic and like that, and those words or rune names are: "Fehu" & "Uruz" & "Raidho" & "Gebo" & "Wunjo" & "Hagalaz" & "Thurisaz" & "Eihwaz" & "Jera" & "Sowulo" & "Ansuz" & "Isa". Whew! (And whynot you try typing those out with spell-check constantly trying to 'correct' you?) And then there's the pictures, which are beaten metal artifacts tending to prove the ancientness of this 'wisdom', and some stones with runes on them (I'm not gonna list them all out) (such stones are available wherever books of ancient wisdom are sold), and a carved stone figure of an armored man on horseback (it's cute!), and, at the bottom right corner, a stone with carved markings on it (the markings highlighted in more red so you can see clearly the picture (again a guy on a horse) and some runes carved above it. Oh, I forgot a metal thingie with runes on it. Ah, me

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Apr 13

Still working my way through Shirer’s monumental The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, just under 60% done and we’re up to November 1939. And, yeah, still reads differently in this present world

A beat-up paperback copy of William L. Shirer’s monumental history The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. The cover is a brick red with the swastika in black on its usual white rondel at the bottom of the cover, the title in yellow letters above this emblem and the subtitle (“A History of Nazi Germany”) and “by William L. Shirer” also in yellow below. This particular copy has been read so much and is so old that the upper right corner is missing, so that the title actually reads “The R- And Fal- Of The Third Reich”. Numerous creases and missing chunks are on the cover, which is taped so as to hold it to the book which still remains readable in spite of all that wear. The torn off corner reveals the dog-eared pages inside, folded from reading not as markers.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Apr 6

I’m re-reading (my 3rd time through) William Shirer’s magisterial The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. Have to admit, hits different now than the first two times (both reads whilst in high school). Though details may be picked at, this is still the best I’ve read about … you know

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Apr 6

Three chocolate crosses in a Thrifty ice cream tub

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Mar 16

Reading _The Invisible Flag_, by Peter Bamm (pseudonym for Curt Emmrich). This semi-fictional autobiography of a Wehrmacht surgeon on the Eastern Front reads sort of like a nobler (no anti-war stuff here) M*A*S*H, though Bamm stresses that true soldiers aren't like "the Others" (his word for Nazis)

This '50s Penguin paperback from the UK has the orange stripes on either side of the white center field (orange being Penguin's color for general fiction) with the text "Penguin Books" at top, the price at bottom (3'6 (=£3.50)), and the title "The Invisible Flag" above and the author's name "Peter Bamm" (see skeet) below a cartouche depicting a grim man in uniform wearing a Stahlheml with a cross (one assumes red, though it's black in the weirdly messy line drawing) upon it, before a heap of stuff which I suppose is supposed to represent a building and the detritus of war. This book comes from the first age of post-WWII rehabiliatory works, preceding the '60s revisionism in which the pendulum swung back to well they weren't all that bad. The 'invisible flag' of the title is the flag of hope, which the author posits flying over the head of all, up there in the sky somewhere, but the book itself is much better written than that clunky image might indicate.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Mar 10

Finally getting back on my PKD re-reads of his novels in publication order with _Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After The Bomb_

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Mar 2

Trying to finally put paid to Thomas Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_, which is excellent, but sometimes difficult

Cover of the Oxford 'World's Classics' paperback edition of Thomas Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_, with an illustration which (we are told) is a detail from an 1822 painting by Caspar David Friedrich, _Moon Rising over the Sea_. And that is what it shows, a party consisting of two women and, just behind them, a gentleman, all sitting on shoreside rocks gazing out over the water where stands a tall ship with topsail and what appear to be some jibs (maybe; I'm no sailor), and in the far distance the moon through the clouds. Though … it could be sunset for all I can tell. C'est la vie. Or at least the painting of life.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Feb 9

"Tros", the first volume of the "Tros Of Samothrace" series (4 books that were originally a bunch of novellas published in Adventure magazine beginning in 1925), but it's sometimes slow going

An Avon paperback cover from 1967 of the first two novellas in the 'Tros of Samothrace' series by Talbot Mundy, here published as vol. 1 in the series, with a cover price of 60¢ and a text banner background shaped like a sailing ship's mainsail, with a pennant in the same white background color above, with the text
"Talbot Mundy's
towering legendary warrior
Tros Of Samothrace
TROS
Tros the Adventure in fateful
confrontation with blue-stained Caswallon
and his queen, Fflur of the Second Sight."
The image behind and (mostly) below this title banner is of two men on a sailing ship with a stormy blue-black sky behind them—much lightning can be seen in that dark background, as well as another oared saying ship with a raised prow in lighter blue relief—the foreground figure our eponymous hero, wearing a magenta or red cape that somehow also wraps back around in front of his groin, carefully revealing his very muscled chest, with six-pack abs somehow going up almost to his very shoulders, his muscular arms holding a long shaft which we can assume is the oar of the storm-tossed ship our hero is standing upon. He also has a large hafted sword somehow attached to his waist, perhaps by the leather strap that descends below the red cape from his right shoulder (he is seen from his front left), though we probably shouldn't worry much about that, as proportion and perspective are not entirely worked out on this cover. He has dark hair with a well-shaven beard (almost a goatee) and mustache, despite the book's narrative describing his 'shoulder-length' hair. Behind him in a green off-the-shoulder number sort of like roman peasants might wear, holding a dagger in his right hand, is a beardless figure which may be (almost certainly is) the companion of Tros, the one-eyed Conops. We also see the inner walls of the ship, for which I cannot be bothered to look up the correct term just now.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Jan 12

Still wending my happy way through the Philip K. Dick novels in order of publication, and as I read The Unteleported Man last year out of order—it was published first in book form in 1966 and I'm up to the novels from 1964—I'm reading the novella in its original form, from Fantastic of December 1964

Cover of the December 1964 issue of the science fiction digest magazine Fantastic: Stories Of Imagination. Below that title and date (just December) and price (50¢) is the text "Complete Short Novel: The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick". The illustration shows a ghostly skeletal (or is it a skeleton sort of covered with musculature?) figure all in bone white with strange white snake-like tendrils of ... electricity? Powerful force lines of something, in any case. These white tendrils are emitted from two walls on either side of the primary figure, walls covered with small disks of varying colors, with maybe some sort of electrical doohickey upon each wall or pillar. (Think like Dr. Frankenstein's lab in the original movie.) And in the background behind the primary standing figure, two bald men—also in the same sort of bone white color—wearing sunglasses perhaps sitting behind some sort of control panel controlling the strange and powerful energies obviously being unleashed upon the man in the middle of the cover. The work is signed by (Lloyd) Birmingham.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Dec 15

Just starting Lookout Cartridge, by Joseph McElroy … and I see that I'm going to have absolute quiet for this one #booksky

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Dec 8

Continuing my re-reads of PKD's novels, in order of publication (for the most part), with the staggeringly good Martian Time-Slip from 1964 #booksky

Cover of a paperback edition of Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick. Cover shows a man and perhaps teenaged boy, both wearing long-sleeved denim shirts and jeans, walking along a rocky path with towering stone formations before them, the boy pointing to a ghostly white figure in a dark opening in the rocks ahead, the figure holding a white staff. Both men are wearing red backpacks, the boy has a coil of rope around his left shoulder, and the man has a waist-high pick he's using as a walking stick. Above the foremost tower of rock are the words in a bubble Sci-Fi font: "Martian Time-Slip" in blue with the author's name "Philip K. Dick" in the same script but smaller and in black just below and to the title's left. The book # "25224" and the price "$1.50" are above a callout quote in two black horizontal lines ending in a sort of emblem for "Ballantine Books SF Classic", the quote reading: "…a novel about schizophrenia and contemporary life…and the fragility of the systems of shared assumptions that hold human society together." followed by the source: "—Rolling Stone"

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Dec 1

Woody Allen’s 1976 collection of his humorous prose, Without Feathers. Say what you will, Allen is one of the rare masters at writing funny

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Nov 28

5 Great Moments In The Life Of Jimmy Durante [alt text doesn’t include little bottom text at the end, saying “and goodnight, audience, wherever you are. Last Observatory for a while~ —Griffy”]

Page from Rip Off Comix #7 (1980): The Griffith Observatory (by Bill Griffith)—5 Great Moments In The Life Of Jimmy Durante. “1. (1933) … Jimmy wrestles Lupé Velez into the orchestra pit during a rehearsal of “Strike Me Pink”…(Jimmy had put a wrench in his pocket prior to a hip-bumping dance routine with the fiery Lupé…)” A stage-level shot of the orchestra pit where horrified band members look on as the woman Lupé is doing something below our sight line to Jimmy, she says “I weel keel you!! You beeg-noses practical joker!” and from Jimmy’s tortured body comes the word balloon saying “Yiiiiii!! A regular female Pagliacci! Leggo my schnozz!! Leggo my schnozz!!” / “2. (c. 1940) The Schnozzola is sued for copyright infringement by poet Alfred Kreymborg who accuses him of plagiarizing his 1916 poem, “Others”…” Kreymborg in pinstripe suit in court saying: “…and furthermore, Your Honor, if Walt Whitman were alive today, he, too, would undoubtedly be exposed to Mr. Durante’s ruinous whims.” Durante says “Walt Whitman? Wasn’t he Distrik Attoiney in th’ Pete Th’ Goat case?!” / “3. (1933) During a Palm Springs vacation, Jimmy was asked to play a duet with Albert Einstein…” Einstein playing a violin is saying: “No!! No!! The key is E Minor to the 6th!! You have been playing in A Major!!” Jimmy at the piano responds: “Gee, Professor—I just can’t follow you wit’ them higher mathematics!!” / “4. (1930) Working for Louis B. Mayer (M-G-M), Jimmy was continually given minor roles in low comedies. In protest, The Schnozzle refused to ever say “Hotcha” again” Close-up of a hairy hand with ring touching Durante’s huge nose, with caption “Mayer would also enter Durante’s dressing room periodically to rub his nose for luck– –“ Jimmy saying: “It’s degradin’!!” / “5. (1930) “Mad Dog Coll” tails Jimmy in his car… He intends to snatch The Schnozz for a big ransom… Jimmy plays it cool- -“ Jimmy followed by long black car grabs hat saying “Good-night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are”

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Nov 17

I can't remember whether I read this before or not, so I'm reading it now, Thomas M. Disch's novel _Camp Concentration_ #booksky

Cover of the Carroll & Graf paperback of Thomas M. Disch's _Camp Concentration_, which has a red background upon which are placed, going from top to bottom, a small price "$3.95" in the upper left corner with the quote "A brilliant piece of science fiction." followed by the name of the person who said that, Ursula LeGuin (both these last two in white type on the red background), with the title "Camp Concentration" below in a nice sans font in blue type, and below that the author's name "Thomas M. Disch" in yellow type, also sans, and just below that in the small white type "author of 334". And below all that fairly sparse text, an image appearing to be crosshatch or scratchboard or I-don't-know-what-I'm-talking-about-so-why-bother in a blue-gray a rectangle anyway with a illustration of a man with a shock of short(ish) hair wearing a buttoned up shirt with the top button unbuttoned, maybe a prisoner's chambray shirt (I'm guessing from the book itself, you unnerstan'), and he has an earring in his left ear, a simple small hoop, but of course the most noticeable thing about the image is the fact that the face of the man has been dislocated about six inches in front (and slightly below) his face, revealing a hollow empty space within his head, and the eyes of this detached face, looking almost like a mask removed from the front of the head, are staring or at least looking at us, the viewer. And the picture is signed "S. Hall", which is Stephen Hall as the back of the book cover tells us.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Nov 10

Reading the 8th Brother Cadfael mystery by Ellis Peters, The Devil’s Novice

Cover of the Futura paperback edition of Ellis Peters’s mystery novel, The Devil’s Novice, which has a pale blue background, with a sort of Celtic woven know design across the top and then the title—with an initial ‘D’ meant to suggest an illuminated manuscript (though it’s so ornate that it almost looks like an ‘O’)—with the text “A Medieval Whodunnit” below, and the name of the author, Ellis Peters (a pseudonym of Edith Pargeter), in another font vaguely suggestive of Medieval something-or-other, and the text “The eighth chronicle of Brother Cadfael” at the bottom.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Nov 3

Continuing with my re-reads of PKD novels in publication order, I am about halfway through The Penultimate Truth, by Philip K. Dick

"A Bluejay Special Edition" is written across a top banner on this trade paper edition of The Penultimate Truth, by Philip K. Dick. (His name is just below that banner.) Between the author's name and the title is the tagline "The Lies Began When The First Bomb Fell..." ... which isn't strictly accurate, but let that pass. Below the title is the text "A Paranoid Masterpiece from the Author of / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Filmed as Bladerunner)", tho' I'm pretty sure the movie was called Blade Runner, two words. Anyway, the picture itself is of a destroyed landscape on the left side, buildings torn in the distance and leafless shreds of tree trunks with nothing living ... and on the right side is green grass with a white picket fence and behind that fields and his and trees, and ... joining the two is a cutaway portrait of ... well, I assume it's Philip K. Dick himself, but maybe it's just some bearded guy, and anyway, it's just the left half of his face—to the viewer's right—and a building type structure fills in the other half of the portrait, with a pretty obvious eyeball in the middle of this factory (?), and the hair of the guy's picture on the right side is completed in the background on the left by a mushroom cloud.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Oct 27

Continuing my re-read of PKD, just started once more to read one of Philip K. Dick's 4 best novels, The Man In The High Castle #booksky

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Oct 20

Wilkie Collin's 3rd novel, Hide And Seek #booksky

On a blue cover the words "Wilkie Collins" above and the title "HIDE and SEEK" below a roughly (very) circular window showing an old etching (used to illustrate an original edition of this work) depicting a woman wearing a long white (night?)dress holding a candlestick with lit candle above her head with her right arm, as she looks down at the ground below her, her long hair falling to either side of her head. A stool with some objects is in the background to the area which she is searching, and behind her is a shadowy figure of a stout man reaching with his right had to her shoulder (in fact, according to the text accompanying the image (printed within the book), he is reaching to snuff out her candle, which is on the opposite side of her body from his hand, but what are ya gonna do?). The man has a beard but no mustache, and wears a tight black skullcap.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Oct 14

Finally took down from my ‘on deck’ shelf and am reading The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, the first in a lauded series by Becky Chambers

Book cover of The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, which shows, besides that title and that author in big 3-D letters (well, the title’s in 3-D, at least) dominating the cover, a small planet in the distance (i.e., behind the “The”) of a murky reddish or maybe cola color, and in the foreground (we know this because part of the image is superimposed over the title, specifically the bottom of the letters “W” & “A” in “Way”) a patched-together somewhat rusty maybe space-going (one assumes) ship with little bits and pieces here and there like some of those old Space 1999 landers but with more dyssymetry and a little bubble part at top (explained in the text of the book so I won’t here) and a big search light thingie (which obviously makes almost no sense in space but …) illuminating the space just before it (which is pretty much impossible unless we’re inside a dust cloud I guess) as well as the bottom “V” of the “W”. There’s also a little circle at the upper right with the following text within: “Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Series”. And at the bottom, below the author’s name, is the blurb quote “Great fun!” with the source given just below as “—Ann Leckie, author of Ancillary Justice”. The black background shows itself to now be pure black, but dotted throughout with little dots that may be stars … or nebulae … or galaxies … or something else that might look like a hazy dot at interstellar distances.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Oct 6

I'm trying to learn or better understand French by reading the first in Maurice Leblanc's series, Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Cambrioleur (and yes, I came to this point by watching the TV series on Netflix) #booksky

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Sep 29

I’m reading the misnamed Little Novels (actually a collection of short stories) by Wilkie Collins #booksky

The cover of the Dover reprint edition of Wilkie Collins’s short story collection confusingly named Little Novels. The title and author’s name are shown in a sprightly serif font atop a beige or maybe brown treatment of some etching of Victorian folk at some gathering place, with a woman seated beneath some window front with an chair next to her untenanted by a human but with some stuff—packages?—on the seat and a leash attached leading to a small dog before her, a man in a bowler leaning over the chair back (the one with the ‘stuff’ on it) appearing to talk to her, and another woman in hat and bustle next to the man, and another half dozen people (well, six men and one woman, the woman paired with a man and two gentlemen in the foreground at left bottom of the picture, the other three men leaning or standing before the windowed wall. Anyway, no more is known (by me) about the picture, as only an art director is credited for the cover. The book was first published (in the UK only) in 1887.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Sep 22

Trying to finish this fabulous collection of the Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector, which I’ve been nibbling at for months and months #booksky

Picture of the book Clarice Lispector Complete Stories, translated by Katrina Dodson

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Sep 21

Only when I quote writers who literally penned their words do I sigh at character limits on whatever-it-is-we-call-these-post-tweet-anything-but-skeets ... (Oh, yes, and of course, Pynchon too)

Picture of a notebook atop an old mouse pad with a picture of a robot toy on it, with a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville at the top of the shown page: "When I come to study what has been, at different times and epochs of history among different peoples, the effective reason why ruling classes have been ruined, I note the various events and men and accidental or superficial causes, but believe me, the real cause, the effective one, that makes men lose power is that they have become unworthy to exercise it."

Below that quote is the beginning of another one which you don't care about (the photographer cut off the whole quote, so obviously didn't care either), but, for completeness sake, let's say it starts off: "The immense sombre fabric that is daily spun bears in its centre the petrifying eyes of an illustrious victory. It is incomprehensible that man ceaselessly returns to this school without learning anything. The day will come, nevertheless, when he can no longer submit, judging by—"

(FWIW, it continues ... "its own determiniability, to the arbitrary will of the social organism that today assures, to the disadvantage of almost all, the pleasure of a few. I believe it is not unreasonable to predict a near hour for the attainment of this greater liberty." and is from André Breton

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Sep 16

Breathes there the man with soul so dead …?

Photo of the page in The Oxford Book Of English Verse (the new 1939 edition, the 1968 reprinting) showing poem #560, a section of Sir Walter Scott’s Lay Of The Last Minstrel, shown here under the rubric “Patriotism”, as “1. Innominatus” (‘unnamed’ in Latin (fancy, eh?)), with the immortal lines:

Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
'This is my own, my native land!'
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Sep 15

Still working through Lombardo’s translation of the Iliad, and am also enjoying O. G. Suttons book Mathematics In Action, a surprisingly cogent explanation of math as it is actually used in the sciences. I would recommend this for anyone whose child’s math in school has gotten beyond them. #booksky

Cover of Dover trade paperback edition of Mathematics In Action, by O. G. Sutton. The cover features a sinusoidal wave form (with axis) across the book dividing the cover roughly into 1/3 and 2/3 of its surface. (The shown function represents a ‘wave group’, that is, a snapshot of amplitude etc. of actual ocean waves as seen offshore.) The top third is in purple, with “Mathematics In Action” boldly in large white text. The bottom two thirds, below the wave function (and note that these two colors ascend above or below the axis as the wave crosses and recrosses it), is a dark somewhat purply blue. The author’s name is at bottom of this large color field, “O. G. Sutton”, and just below the wave function in smaller type is the subtitle of the book: “Applications in Aerodynamics, Statistics, Weather Prediction, and Other Sciences” [note: I’ve added some commas for clarity]. Along the left side, the spine of the book, the colors have faded due to sun (one assumes), showing a pale lavender and light blue.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Sep 8

Am re-reading the Iliad in Stanley Lombardo's translation. I'd read the Odyssey in many different translations, but Lombardo's was the first time I was able to be drawn into the compelling sweep of Homer's tale of war and anger and violence and loss.

The cover of Stanley Lombardo's translation of Homer's Iliad consists solely of a black & white photo from the June 6th, 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy, this particular one taken from the perspective of a now emptied landing craft (I think they were called LSTs) with the troops with full packs and their guns in hands wading waist-deep in the ocean water at the shore as they walk and wade and struggle towards the distant beach where dim grey shadows are perhaps other men or rafts. Many of the men on the distant beach seem prone, perhaps dead or dying. And beyond that actual line of the shore are a few most distant standing figures and a craft of some sort, a tank perhaps, and further inland from that along the long deep shore of sand are more figures, dug in maybe, and in the far distant are the dark banks of clouds or hills or who knows to what unknown future these men who've just jumped into the frigid waters are not slogging? The obvious connection of this photo from the U.S. Coast Guard on that terrible and fateful day to the subject of the book is the seaborne assault upon the fair city of Troy in what was to become known as Asia Minor, of which the Iliad is but a small part, of course. The text upon the stark b&w photo is, at top and in red "ILIAD" with just below in a bit smaller font in white "HOMER". At the bottom of the cover, in a grey out of focus part of the LST in the foreground are the lines "Translated by Stanley Lombardo" with "Introduction by Sheila Murnaghan" just below that. You can also make out a dent to the book at the top and a fold in the upper right corner doubtless from a previous reading of mine.

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Sep 2

I’ve been slogging through Milton’s Paradise Lost for well over a year now (not for nothing did Samuel Johnson say “Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure”), and finally finished his “Areopagitica”, so on to the criticism!

Cover of the Norton Critical Edition of Paradise Lost, which has a grey-blue rectangular frame around a light olive rectangle (with a thin white border) with the words “Paradise Lost” beneath which is “John Milton”. Below that text is a squarish picture, and excerpt from a painting we are told (on the back of the book) is “The Shepherd’s Dream” from Fuseli’s _Paradise Lost_, in the Tate Gallery. This dark image shows … well, what, exactly? A figure in dark clothing his leg stretched out before him and hunching over those legs, perhaps the titular shepherd, in a dark hat, maybe he’s sleeping, a dog is lying at his feet, is that a sheep to his right? A woman stares at us from behind and to the left of the central dreaming figure, her hair blond or auburn and done up in some almost triangular do, while above cavort dancing maidens … maybe, a swirl of four figures, three as if women in dresses or gowns were seen from above while they danced around another figure—does her foot grow from the dark sleeper’s head? Hard to say. I guess we’ll all have to go to the Tate. Below that image the words “Edited by Gordon Teskey”, and below that—in the bottom of the blue border rectangle—“A Norton Critical Edition”

Mysterious6030@mysterious6030· Aug 28

From Chapter Six of Philip K. Dick’s novel Time Out Of Joint: